


pay the man

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bank Robbery, Car Chases, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Organized Crime, Sexual Tension, now there is smut in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-27 07:57:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12076860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Keith's a prodigal getaway driver trying to get out of the game, and Shiro—he's not who he says he is.





	1. chase

**Author's Note:**

> so this is happening. 
> 
> i don't know how long it's going to be. long... i think... let me live.
> 
> it's inspired the movie baby driver, but i'm far from faithful to the movie's plot. i just said to myself "what if getaway driver keith" and here we are.
> 
> warnings for violence, guns, sex, that stuff. also, cancer mentions. 
> 
> this fic is for jack, who got me to watch voltron in the first place, and who is cool. thanks, jack!

It’s quiet in the car. Keith has them going seventy, keeping even with the flow of the mid-morning traffic, on a highway weaving through the trunks of glass-faced office towers. He trains his eyes on the line where the road meets the horizon—helps him to ignore the sawed-off shotgun visible in the rearview mirror.

“I already feel sick,” comes a whine from the back seat, followed by an audible _thump_. Hunk banging his head against the window.

Lance twists around in the passenger seat so he can glare at Hunk. “He’s not even going fast yet.”

“Yeah, but my stomach knows how fast he’s gonna be going later.”

“Your stomach needs to chill, man.”

They’re approaching the exit; Keith pulls off. He cycles through the remaining directions in his head: left. Right. Sharp left. Merge. Pull up to the curb.

“I can’t just make it chill, _man_.”

“You know what bothers me?” asks a third voice, and Pidge peeks into the front of the car. “When people argue unnecessarily before we have to go to work.”

“To be fair,” says Hunk, “I’m not worried about _our_ work. I’m worried about once we’re done and Keith takes over. I think I’m gonna die every time.”

“And you never have! Look at that!” Lance punches Keith’s arm a little too hard and earns himself a nasty look.

But Keith says nothing, still. He makes the sharp left and merges. The curb is five hundred feet ahead, and then a hundred. He doesn’t think about the building it foregrounds. It’s a parking spot and a starting line, that’s it.

He pulls up in front of the stone-faced building and the bickering trails off.

They’ve done this before and each time has begun with a moment like this: they’re swallowed by deafening silence, wondering what would happen if they didn’t get out, if they hit the highway and got out of this town and got out of this state, if they found another city or maybe four and never saw one another again.

And like most moments, it doesn’t last. It’s a stupid fucking pipe dream, a fantasy of a world where their actions don’t have consequences—in a world like that maybe they’d never have ended up here at all.

Keith pops the aux cord into his beat-up excuse for an MP3 player and scrolls to a banger. “Two minutes, forty two seconds,” he tells the rest of the car.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Lance, throwing his door open. Hunk and Pidge follow suit in the back.

Keith hits play on the track as they’re pulling ski masks over their faces.

_Can’t keep my hands to myself,_

_Think I’ll dust ‘em off, put ‘em back up on the shelf._

He taps the steering wheel along to the beat of the song, watching the rearview, where the scene is familiar. Pidge goes in first with the bags, followed by Hunk and Lance with their guns low at their sides like umbrellas on a sunny day. The three of them disappear into the building. The tint of Keith’s sunglasses bathes the concrete in red.

_I’m a rebel just for kicks, now._

_I been feeling it since 1966, now._

The first job, he can remember, the song—a punk rock anthem that seemed like the only suitable choice at the time—played at half-tempo while he obsessed over everything that would come after it ended. He thought about the parking garage and the sirens and the smell of rubber burning against asphalt, before he knew those things firsthand. He let his imagination shiver.

_Let me kick it like it’s 1986, now._

_Might be over now, but I feel it still._

It took two or three jobs before he learned to empty his mind of all that shit. Instead he focuses on the music, the smooth swinging rhythm that makes him nod along. He turns up the speakers—he always picks a car with good sound for the first round, and he likes it to be red, too. These are peculiar preferences he can’t explain with words, so he never tries. Beyond these essential details, it’s an ordinary little Subaru with enough get-up-and-go to see him through the next ten minutes. That’s all he needs.

He rolls down the windows and lets the beat pour into the sidewalk and street. An old woman on a bench across the street stares at him. She must be senile, must not have noticed the masks and trench coats and guns. He keeps beating his hands against the wheel.

_Might’ve had your fill, but you feel it still._

Nearly a minute and a half into the song. In the rearview, he sees movement through the clear glass doors of the building. The roar of the music muffles something that might be a scream. He shuts his eyes when the song hits the bridge.

_We could fight a war for peace._

_Give in to that easy living—_

A loud pop pierces the music. Keith’s hands pause on the wheel.

_Goodbye to my hopes and dreams._

_Start flipping for my enemies._

He squints out at the building’s doors, where nothing appears to be happening. But he hasn’t heard that noise before on a job. It isn’t right. That noise, it’s… messy. The music continues.

_Is it coming?_

_Is it coming back?_

Keith faces front again, foot hovering over the gas. There’s no traffic on the street. The old woman hasn’t moved. Two minutes in now and he’s fucked up—he’s starting to think. He tries to find the beat of the song again.

 _I’m a rebel just for kicks, now_.

 _I’ve been feeling it since 1966, now_.

Shit.

 _Might be over now, but I feel it still_.

His foot brushes the gas and the car jerks forward an inch. The glowing blue bar showing the song’s progress on his iPod is fuller and fuller, seconds disappearing as their time runs up. He knows it’s the rush of adrenaline he gets every time, but fuck if that noise didn’t shake him. A warning shot, it had to have been.

 _Let me kick it like it’s 1986, now_.

 _Might be over now, but I feel it still_.

He catches the last verse of the song with a nod. A horrible electric shrieking hits his ears: the bank alarm.It blasts through the street and startles the old woman on the bench. Took longer than usual to trip it. No telling what that means.

_Might’ve had your fill, but I feel it still._

The doors of the building fly open and Hunk, Pidge, and Lance burst onto the sidewalk, their bags full to bursting.

“Sorry, we had a hiccup,” says Pidge as they descend on the car. Keith locks eyes with Hunk, who’s gone pale, a marked contrast against the blood splatter on his cheek.

So, not a warning shot.

Keith takes off before Lance can get his door fully shut.

When he first learned to drive, back when he was ten or eleven or something like that, who knows, he liked feeling a car gain purchase as it picks up speed. He waited for it, hoped for it, rather than grasping it with both hands. Now the car is a proxy; he’s the one who gains purchase, who gains power, who gains speed. The machine’s an extension of him.

He sort of registers someone talking in the back seat, as much as he can register anything when he drives. He weaves through cars on a broad avenue, the speedometer rising from ninety, to ninety-five, to a hundred. The rhythmic murmurs go, “Holy fucking shit, holy fucking shit.”

The sirens materialize behind them, at first one, then three, then a dozen.

Lance braces himself against the dashboard, careening his long neck to look out the back window. He starts peeling off his mask, but Pidge hits the back of his seat. “Not yet!”

“But it’s itchy—”

“There are traffic cams.”

“Then why doesn’t Keith have to wear one?”

“Because he won’t,” Pidge sighs. “The sunglasses are fine.”

Keith turns to Lance and grins.

He can feel Lance’s face puckering behind the mask. “You’ve got a lot of them to lose,” says Lance, combative.

“No problem.” At the next four-way intersection, Keith sets his sights on a side street; to get there without being pursued, he rips the handbrake, swinging them around the car in the next lane, which forces it to stop short and block the side street behind them. They leave a fleet of cop cars trapped at the intersection by some clueless civilian. The screaming from the backseat is unmistakably Hunk’s.

But the side street ends half a mile later and they emerge onto another avenue, more sirens wailing at their backs. It’s a chase, now. Keith knows what that means because he’s done it before. The city will be shutting down, trying to trap him in some corner somewhere where the choices are give in or die.

Keith takes the third choice each time, without fail: he chooses to be better than anyone who’d try and outdrive him. He chooses to be the best.

More cops form a blockade at the next intersection. One’s out of the car, holding a spiked chain—he tosses it across the road as they approach. Keith feels his mouth twisting into a sneer as he swerves and drifts to avoid it. The police SUV immediately tailing him isn’t so lucky, and it takes out a cruiser in the blockade when its tires go out. 

There are three patrol cars dogging him when he spies his next move, an exit for the interstate.

“You’re never getting rid of them on the highway, idiot,” says Lance, sitting forward so he can stare at the helicopter now tracking them from overhead.

Keith doesn’t dignify that shit with a response; he passes the exit at full speed, waits for the cops to pass it too, and drifts into a violent U-turn, leaving their pursuers to cruise in the wrong direction. He hits the curb going up the ramp and Lance yelps, about what he deserves for mouthing off.

He’s going the wrong way up the ramp and has to dodge some oncoming traffic; once he reaches the highway it’s easy enough to swing around and into the flow of cars. Or, it’s Keith’s version of easy, which means screeching tires and the scent of rubber burning and his passengers clinging to their seats.

The police helicopter persists in monitoring them from above. Fucking annoying.

As if she’s read his mind, Pidge pokes her head between the front seats. “This is why I suggested you stop picking red cars.”

Keith elects not to respond, but Lance is shaking his head, ready to answer for their driver. “You’re gonna keep dreaming on that one.”

“It’s not a dream—it’s strategic, they _know_ our first car is always red.”

The sun catches a red metallic shape a few rows of vehicles ahead. Keith smiles to himself and hits the gas, surging by other drivers, weaving from lane-to-lane.

“Yeah, and,” Lance is saying, “ideally we wouldn’t be spending so much time in the first car, anyway.” Which is supposed to be a dig at Keith, only Keith doesn’t hear it.

He’s too busy circumventing car after car until he reaches an open spot in the lane between two red sedans.

Pidge glances out the window, sees what he’s doing, and starts to laugh.

“Find the lady,” says Hunk, maybe trying to laugh along, though it sounds more like a nervous wail.

Keith barks, “Everyone get down and get ready to change clothes.”

“What the fuck is ‘find the lady’?” Lance says, apparently the only one who doesn’t understand what’s going on. Keith has to shove his head down with a free hand.

Up ahead, a broad bridge crosses over the highway, and there’s an exit just beyond that, Keith knows—he’s spent hours staring at maps so he can know these things. He dreams about interstates. Off the exit there’s a parking garage, and in the parking garage sits an unlocked SUV in a demure grey, awaiting their arrival.

He stays flush with the other two red cars, a neat little line of vehicles indistinguishable from above. They head under the bridge, where, finally hidden from the helicopter’s view, he presses forward and pulls in front of the sedan on the left—then abruptly reduces his speed, forcing the other car to swerve into the center lane—and into Keith’s original spot.

“Find the lady’s a scam, right?” Pidge wonders aloud. “Because the house always wins.”

When they emerge from beneath the bridge, Keith plays commuter-caught-in-a-bad-way, and takes the first exit off the highway.

The helicopter continues down the highway, pursuing the red car in the center lane. Hunk whistles weakly in celebration.

“So that’s what that means,” says Lance, starting to sit up, but Keith shoves him down again.

“Not yet.”

The parking garage sits adjacent to a quiet office building, and the third floor is empty in the mid-morning. Keith parks the Subaru alongside the grey SUV; the four of them pile out, Pidge, Hunk, and Lance shedding their trench coats for the plain clothes underneath; Pidge takes the driver’s seat, Keith the passenger’s, and Hunk and Lance hop in the back with their score.

A second later, before Pidge can start the car, Hunk throws his door open again and makes for the nearest garbage can.

Pidge shoots Keith a panicked look, and Keith responds with a shake of his head. _Don’t worry,_ he’s saying.

So Keith, Pidge, and Lance sit in patient silence while Hunk empties the contents of his stomach into that garbage can, the sound echoing through the parking garage. Pidge’s shoulders relax.

Hunk climbs back into the car, wiping his face.

“I can’t do anything that fancy,” says Pidge with a smile as she pulls out of the garage. She’s reassuring Hunk that his suffering will end soon. But Pidge won’t have to _do anything that fancy_ , and she knows that, because Keith has done his job.

 

 

 

 

Something drips on Keith. He glares up at the warehouse rafters in search of the offending leak, and it drips again, right into his eye.

Blinking rapidly, he slinks closer to the long table in the center of the room, where his partners are sitting with their cuts. He doesn’t join them outright—he prefers to keep his distance when the day is done. He stuffed his money in his jacket pocket immediately and now he’s just waiting for permission to leave.

“This isn’t fifteen percent,” Lance is complaining, fanning through one of his stacks. “I know how much we got out of that place. They’re shorting us.”

“We only share ten if shots are fired,” says Pidge tiredly. “You know that.” She’s arranging her money in a hidden compartment at the bottom of her Jansport. It freaks Keith out how normal she looks outside of their drives, outside of work. She wears high top sneakers with the shoelaces lazily tied, like any average sixteen-year-old might.

Lance throws up his hands. “I didn’t fire any shots. Why is that on me?”

Pidge glances sympathetically at Hunk, who’s hunched over, staring out into space. He doesn’t seem especially cognizant of Lance’s comment, but his chin sinks closer to the tabletop.

Pidge gives Lance a look that clearly says, _look what you did now_. In response, Lance pouts and turns away.

The plans for that day’s job are still up on the cork board at the foot of the table: street maps, satellite images, photographs of the bank interior, profiles of the security and administrative staff members. Someone does thorough reconnaissance for their jobs, but the information might as well appear to them out of thin air. The Galra family only gives you as much transparency as you need to get by.

A minute or two of silence passes while the four of them wait. Lance glances at the door to the office and shakes his head, impatient.

“Do you think that security guard is going to die?”

Hunk’s voice is small. A palpable hesitation circles the room—no one wants to answer, no one knows how.

Keith feels Lance looking at him, but he didn’t ask what happened in the bank because he didn’t want to know, and he doesn’t want to get involved now. Yeah, it sucks that Hunk had to do something he didn’t want to do. But that’s the whole fucking situation, isn’t it? None of them are here by choice.

“You only got him in the leg, I think,” Pidge finally says, because it’s clear Hunk needs to hear something reassuring and neither Lance nor Keith has stepped up.

Hunk shuts his eyes. “But those shotguns do so much damage.”

“Hey, it’s cool,” Lance manages. “He pulled his on you first.”

Hunk puts his head down on the table and says nothing. His silence sets the tone for the rest of the time they wait, another quarter of an hour, until the office door creaks open at last.

Sendak emerges wheeling a cart with the rest of the score, comically vast compared to their shares. Behind him, moving slower, is Haggar. A draft makes the black veil across her face flutter; Keith has only seen her face once, and he wouldn’t be surprised if the others haven’t seen it at all.

“Can we go?” Keith asks. Sendak sneers at him—he’s always acting like he’s a second from popping one of them in the head, even though he’s just a smoke screen, really. The Galra use his booming voice and penchant for luxury to draw attention away from themselves.

Haggar steps to the head of the table. “Not yet.” She pulls four burner phones from her handbag and slides one toward each of them. “You will be contacted for your next job within the next couple of weeks.”

Pidge, Lance and Keith accept their phones wordlessly. Hunk, however, raises his head and stares at the device sitting before him, then glances at Haggar, inscrutable behind her veil. “Uh,” he says, a tremor in his voice. “I… is there some way I can…”

Sendak takes a step forward and growls, “Take the phone.”

Hunk gulps. Keith can see him shake slightly beneath the table. “Um—”

“Are you the one who fired?” Haggar asks. Her voice makes Sendak pause.

Hunk’s eyes flutter closed for a moment before he says, “Yup.”

“Then you ought to be removed.” Hunk tosses a panicked look around the table, but Lance and Pidge are just as shocked as him. Keith frowns. “We will find another use for you, for now,” Haggar adds.

Hunk exhales deeply, and he slips the burner into his pocket. Keith can’t help feeling a pang of envy, though it’s likely misplaced. Hunk’s alternative assignment could be worse than where he is now.

“What about our fourth?” Pidge asks, nervous. The four of them have been a unit on a dozen jobs already. They might not be friends, but they’ve earned one another’s mutual trust, as much as you ever trust anyone in this business. Bringing on someone new could throw everything off. And there’s a chance they’ll be _friendly_ , which Keith would hate.

“You’ll have one,” Sendak snaps.

Haggar is already shuffling out—their questions are below her pay grade, apparently. “You’re dismissed. Stagger your departures.”

It’s likely that Lance and Pidge will stay behind and speak to Hunk, who they may never see again, and it’s likely that they’ll turn to Keith too, to exchange some pleasantry, perhaps to discuss the coming changes in their work. And when they do they’ll find he’s already gone, not a word said in goodbye.

 

 

 

 

The deep irony of Daddy Zee’s BBQ and Clam Shack is that Keith has been coming here for years, since he was a kid, long before he learned it’s a front for the Galras. Money laundering. Of course.

He might’ve stopped when he found out, because in general the last thing he wants is to think about work when he’s not working, or to give his “employers” any sort of additional support; neither is in his best interest. He wants this to be over one day, after all.

But the pulled pork sandwiches are fucking fantastic, and around the same time he made the Galra connection, Shiro started working there.

Not that he’s sentimental enough to come back to a restaurant over and over just because he has—just because of one of the staff. Only he’s exactly that sentimental, and it’s what’s happening, as loathe as Keith is to admit it even in the privacy of his own head.

On a weekday in the mid-afternoon, Daddy Zee’s is between lunch and dinner rushes, so the only other customer is a toothless old guy in the corner mashing some hush puppies with his gums while he reads the paper.

Shiro smiles when he sees Keith come in. He’s leaning on the front counter with his thick arms folded casually, wearing his apron with the ugly Daddy Zee’s logo (a pig eating a basket of fried clam strips) and his name stitched on the breast, which always seems to have fewer grease stains than the aprons of the others who work here. But that might just be Keith’s eyes playing tricks on him—the same eyes that cast a sort of heavenly glow around Shiro’s head. 

“Hey,” says Shiro, a lilt to his voice that’s probably just good customer service, but always leaves Keith pondering any genuine fondness Shiro might have for him. “How’s your day going?”

Keith shrugs, and slides onto one of the stools at the counter. Daddy Zee’s is set up like a retro diner, featuring gaudy sentimental ‘60s decor. There’s a jukebox that may or may not work—Keith has never seen evidence either way—and some signed guitars and gold records hanging from the walls, alongside framed photographs of pigs and oceans. The only hint of the restaurant’s true purpose is in its confused inspiration.

Keith likes to think Shiro doesn’t know. He likes to think that the Galra keep their kitchen staff out of the back room where they handle their sourer business and nobody ever asks questions. He likes to think that, outside of the fifteen or so minutes Keith sees him once or twice a week, Shiro is living a crime-free life, maybe working on a degree in restaurant management or saving up to own his own Crunch fitness franchise.

Keith might know what Shiro does outside of Daddy Zee’s if he’d ever asked. But he hasn’t, because he doesn’t ask anyone those types of questions, and even when the odd urge seizes him, his tongue feels leaden in Shiro’s presence.

Which is why, when Shiro asks how his day went, Keith shrugs and takes a seat.

“The usual?”

Keith nods.

Still smiling, Shiro scribbles the order, _2 pulled pork sandwich,_ on a ticket and sticks it in the window for the cooks. “Same drink, too?”

“Yep.”

Shiro throws him a grin. “There you are. Thought you had laryngitis.” The scar across the bridge of his nose crinkles when he smiles. Somehow he’s handsomer for the scar rather than in spite of it. Keith frowns at the countertop, and then into the glass of sweet tea Shiro places in front of him.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Shiro pushes back off the counter and stretches his arms, drawing attention to the barrel-like quality of his chest and his general… physique. “One day I’m going to get a conversation out of you.” Keith busies himself opening a straw for his tea, ends up crushing it, and has to get another.

There’s an abrupt clanging from the kitchen, and someone hollers for Shiro. “Sorry,” he tells Keith, before he slips through the swinging door into the back. Thinking about Shiro back there makes Keith’s stomach churn—what if he’s talking to one of the Galra, or a crony? What if they’ve got their hooks in him, after all?

It’s stupid how much he cares, he thinks, sipping on his tea. Not that it’s the same kind of caring he does for his dad or his music or his mementos of his mother—it’s surface, this caring. He cares because Shiro’s always been polite to him but never overbearing, and because Shiro is hot. Keith cares the way one cares about missing an episode of their favorite television show when it airs—missing that show wouldn’t ruin his life, but it could ruin his day, and there isn’t much capable of ruining Keith’s day.

So Shiro is his favorite show. Or something. Here’s yet another thing that’s embarrassing even to think, and he also feels embarrassed about getting embarrassed, which in turn makes him angry and a tiny bit red in the face. Maybe this wouldn’t be a problem if he actually tried watching television or having hobbies. Except that shit always feels like he’s playing at normal, and the moment he veers into ordinary he knows he’s lying to himself.

Shiro emerges from the back, talking over his shoulder. “It won’t be a problem. Don’t worry about it.” When he turns around, Keith catches himself staring, and quickly lowers his eyes. “Sorry about that,” says Shiro.

“It’s fine.” Keith means this as a quick platitude, but he can’t even do platitudes right, and it comes out harsh and dismissive.

Shiro raises his eyebrows. Fuck. “Oh, yeah? I’m glad you think so.”

Keith is turning red again. “I didn’t mean it—”

“No, no,” says Shiro, clearly biting back laughter. “And if it weren’t fine, I’m just wondering—what was the plan?”

Keith’s tongue is doing that thing again. The leaden thing.

A bell dings and Keith’s pulled pork sandwiches appear in the window. A smiling Shiro retrieves the bag and places it on the counter, but doesn’t slide it over to his customer. The way he stands with his head cocked to the side makes it painfully clear he’s waiting for an answer.

Keith swallows hard. “Leave the gun, take the pulled pork.”

Shiro laughs.

Keith made Shiro laugh. A real laugh, too, from his belly.

He might have taken more time to revel in his accomplishment, but they’re interrupted by the door to the back swinging open and Sendak stomping into the main room of the restaurant.

The last time Keith saw Sendak at Daddy Zee’s was the day he figured out the Galra run the place. They probably know Keith comes here regularly, because Haggar always knows, but he never sees them. Until now. Keith resists the ridiculous urge to run, like he didn’t see this guy an hour ago.

Sendak takes one look at him, blinks, and promptly—pretends he doesn’t exist? Fine. He turns to Shiro.

“You’re needed in the back. Have someone else run the register.”

The smile has vanished from Shiro’s face. “Okay. Let me just ring this one up.”

Sendak’s tiny eyes squint at Shiro. He dips back through the door.

Shiro turns back to Keith and slides him the bagged up sandwiches. He smiles again, though it’s obviously forced. “Bosses, you know?”

The irony of that statement infuriates Keith almost as much as the irony of his favorite restaurant being run by the family who ruined his life. “Yeah. I know.” He downs the rest of his tea, fishes a twenty out of his wallet and tosses it on the counter. “Keep the change.”

“You sure?”

Keith grabs the sandwiches and goes, which is answer enough.

 

 

 

 

Keith can’t understand why it messes him up so much, thinking that someone he likes could be like him. A criminal. Or, a victim of the criminal dynasty that quietly dominates his city. Two equally shitty options.

Perhaps he’s more empathetic than he knows, since he worries about this stuff. He’s not opposed to the idea that he might be, what— _compassionate_? But he can’t help feeling compassion doesn’t suit him, even if its undercurrent runs beneath his surface. It’s not a trait typically ascribed to loner getaway drivers, and he’s never been anything more than that.

The light is flickering in the apartment stairwell, again. Another problem the super will probably never get to, the shitbag. Keith hops up and attempts to slap it, but he’s lacking about five inches necessary to get there. He stomps the ground in frustration. At least no one was around to see him try and fail.

His dad is asleep on the moth-eaten sofa, television running QVC. The home nurse has beenhere since Keith left—the sink is clear of dishes, and the old containers from Daddy Zee’s and the China Garden have vanished from the kitchen table. In their place sits a set of large weekly pill organizers and a handwritten note. He scans it while he unwraps the sandwiches and places them on plates. Just a reminder about driving Dad to Chemo, like he’d forget that. 

When he rouses his father from sleep, he gets the plate of food pushed away. “Too sick to eat,” says Dad, and he rolls away.

Keith sets the sandwich on a side table and sinks cross-legged to the floor. “Can I help you to bed?” He doesn’t recognize his own voice when he talks to his father, lately. He sounds sapped, cooler than he should. Hard to say where the warmth went.

There’s no answer to his question, so he shuts off the television, stows his father’s dinner in the fridge, and turns out the lights in the living room. He takes his own dinner to his bedroom.

The sandwich is gone in a few bites. Keith slips into his treasured over-ear headphones, fishes an iPod from the collection, and puts on an album he’s heard a million times, in the good way.

The contentment he gets from this nightly ritual is enough to drive away the anger at a life that feels unfair, at least enough for him to sleep. And he’s dead to the sound of the burner phone receiving an SMS, which he won’t discover until the morning, just before dawn, when he wakes up still in his jeans and gets thrust into another day.

 

 

 

 

“Do you think they’re gonna tell us his name?”

“Why are you assuming it’s a ‘he,’ Lance?”

Lance blinks at Pidge across the table in the warehouse. “Uh—well…” He leans back in his chair, arms across his chest, then catches the smug chuckle Pidge and Keith are sharing. “I miss Hunk, damn it.”

The mention of Hunk wipes the smile from Pidge’s face. “Has either of you heard from him?”

Why she thinks that’s something that could happen is beyond Keith, but she’s allowed a certain amount of naivety, being the youngest.

That’s why Keith only shakes his head. Lance’s answer is a gentle shrug and a, “Sorry, nothing.”

A beat of silence passes. Pidge sighs noisily and cranes her neck to look at the door. “Where are they? I can’t stay forever, I’ve got a test in AP Chem tomorrow.”

“Can’t believe you’re doing that whole school thing,” says Lance, with a swagger suggesting he’s long abandoned ‘that whole school thing’.

“Why would I do that!”

“‘Cause you make like, five grand a month doing this.”

“That money is for college. I can’t go to MIT if I don’t do well in high school.” Pidge regards Lance with an increasingly critical frown. “Are you not in school?”

“Hell no. I dropped out.” At her scandalized expression, Lance blubbers, and sticks a finger toward Keith. “He’s not in school either!”

“That’s because he’s older.”

“He is? How much?”

“I don’t know specifically!”

Lance turns on Keith, who’s feeling unhappy with the progress of the conversation. “How old are you?”

Now they’re both looking at him. Expectant. He narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Because…” Lance can’t finish the answer. He starts shaking his head. “I can’t deal with this guy, Pidge.”

Keith stays quiet even as they chatter on with complaints about his tight-lipped nature. It might be harmless, telling them his age (twenty—well, nearly), but the less he divulges to this part of his life, the less power it’ll have over him when he finally gets out.

And it shouldn’t be long now. Keith has done a lot of work. Made them a lot of money. He’s been keeping track. Two more jobs, maybe three.

The sound of the warehouse doors opening startles the three of them from their seats.

Sendak enters first, a file case in hand that should contain the particulars of their next job. He’s followed by Haggar, who’s followed by—

“Is that him?” Pidge whispers, tugging at Keith’s sleeve.

 _No,_ he wants to be able to say. _No, no, it can’t be. There’s been a mistake._

“Must be,” says Lance. “Jeez, talk about older.”

Shiro.

Wearing a motorcycle jacket instead of his Daddy Zee’s apron, so he looks like he’s from an alternate reality. But that’s not something that happens. There’s only one Shiro—Keith’s Shiro.

Who doesn’t belong here.

Shiro’s gaze settles on Keith, and Keith waits for Shiro’s face to fall like his own did a second ago. Because he should be just as shocked to see Keith here as Keith is to see him.

And then Shiro doesn’t blink, doesn’t miss a beat. He smiles at the three of them, at Keith especially, not a twinkle of surprise in his eyes. That smile isn’t the delight Keith is used to—this one’s a gut punch. A KO, even.

“Nice to meet you all,” says Shiro, grabbing a chair. “Are we ready to get started?”


	2. shatter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the update speed not being awesome so far. i just wrapped up a crazy 6 weeks of traveling/new job/people visiting me/cons/being sick? things are settling down now so i hope i'll actually have time for fic.

They’re not called _crushes_ because they’re painless. It’s a violent experience and the hardest part, the longest fall, is when the illusion shatters. Because in every crush there’s a lie, an exaggeration, a fantasy: more than liking someone, you’re enamored of them. And you can’t see it for what it is, until suddenly that’s all you see.

Keith has spent the length of the meeting gritting his teeth, making his jaw throb from his chin to his ear. He doesn’t know what to do with his anger other than beat himself up—and that’s fitting, right? He was an idiot. He deserves to hurt a little.

Stupid, stupid, hoping Shiro might be different when he should’ve known the truth, when it was right there in front of him. No one could work at Daddy Zee’s for as long as Shiro had without at least becoming complicit, and Shiro had gone even further than that. Maybe he’d even worked for the Galra before, maybe making coffee became a cover. Maybe he’s a shitbag—maybe he’s a sociopath. You’d have to be, wouldn’t you? To seem that nice on the outside.

Pidge keeps asking questions. Security cameras this, armed guards that. He likes Pidge a lot, generally. She’s smart, she’s kind of funny, she gets things done. She doesn’t needle him to talk more or drive differently. And he’s never been as frustrated with her as he is right now, while he sits opposite Shiro at the meeting table and suffers.

Keith knows Shiro is watching him. He knows, and he doesn’t care. Fuck Shiro. Keith keeps avoiding eye contact and holding in a growl.

Except it could be a misunderstanding. Shiro could be in the same situation as the rest of them, forced into serving the Galra out of debt or necessity. It could be that he’s owed sympathy, or solidarity.

But probably not. So fuck Shiro.

He just wants to get out of here and go for a drive. Shiro’s betrayal and Keith’s thinking of it as such—his sentimental fuckery—feels like a breaking point, like if he did start to drive he might never turn around and head home.

But there’s his dad to remember, and the Galra have proven themselves inescapable. Another city, another name, they’d find him.He won’t go anywhere except a spot in the hills out from the city, where he likes to sit on the hood of his car and look out a valley of green and listen to the crickets murmur in the trees.

“Are we settled on the details?” Haggar says, Keith tuning into the finality of her question. He’s out of his seat and heading for the door while everyone else nods, just as soon as he can leave without seeming anything more than his usual independent self. Even if they figure out he’s upset, he has to get out of there before they start asking why.

He makes it across the parking lot and to his car in three strides, but when he hops into the driver’s seat, he finds his hands are shaking and he can’t get the key in the ignition. Funny, a dozen bank robberies and this is what fucks him up too badly to do the thing he does best.

The warehouse door creaks open, and Lance’s whiny cackle echoes across the parking lot before Sendak snaps, “Shut up, imbecile.”

Keith tries the keys again. After their meetings Galra “employees” are supposed to go out one at a time, from different entrances, just in case.There’s no telling if Shiro might be the next one out, if he might see Keith sitting in his car alone, if he might… laugh. Smirk. Or if he might not care at all.

Any one of those possibilities is enough to make Keith’s hands shake harder, because all of them make him think of Shiro’s face, and he’d take any other thought over that right now.

Keith gives up on the ignition for a beat. He draws a deep breath. He’s not into meditation, but if he can calm down, perhaps he can drive. Driving will help, it always does.

There’s a tap at his window, and he beats his fist against the horn when he starts, making the car screech in surprise.

A pair of round lenses catch the light from a streetlamp. “You left your jacket,” says Pidge’s voice. She presses his beat-up red-and-white letterman jacket against the glass.

He has to wait a second before he’s composed enough to roll down the window and take the jacket from her. “Thanks.”

“How do you know Shiro?”

Jesus Christ.

“Sorry?” she says, maybe detecting the horror coming off him in waves.

“I don’t know him.”

“Seriously? You were giving him this look the whole meeting. ‘The stank eye,’ I think Lance said…”

“I wasn’t,” Keith says, stupidly. He was. And the hesitation before Pidge speaks again suggests she knows he was, too, even if she doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge.

“I don’t think they’d want us, um—working with people we know? It makes it easier to connect all of us—”

“Good thing I don’t know him, then.” That part, at least, is true. Again, Pidge’s silence speaks volumes: she doesn’t believe him. He adds, “I swear. I don’t. He just looks like some asshole I knew a few years ago.”

Pidge makes a little doubtful sound, probably because there aren’t a whole lot of dudes with large facial scars and two-tone hair. But Keith doesn’t need it to be a good lie, just good enough for her to know she shouldn’t press him. “It’s not going to be weird for you, is it?”

Keith snorts, which isn’t a _no_ , but he can hope Pidge takes it as one. The streetlamp casts her face in shadow, so there’s no telling what she’s thinking.

She takes a step back from the car. “Okay. Goodnight, see you soon.”

Keith grunts and nods in answer and rolls up the window. As he pulls out of the lot, relief settles over him—he’s escaped, he thinks.

Then a figure appears in the blinding white of his headlights. Keith hits the breaks, and Shiro comes into focus, bracing himself against the hood of the car.

“Fuck!”

Shiro is sliding around the passenger side and Keith’s heart surges into his throat. He’s got nothing to defend himself and the others are gone by now—the only thing he can do is drive his way out of this, and that’s difficult when Shiro is climbing into his passenger seat.

“Hey,” Shiro says, a little breathless, unreasonably friendly. “Sorry to scare you.”

“Why are you in my car?”

“You left before I got to introduce myself.”

“Can you get the fuck out of my car?”

“I’m Shiro. I don’t know if I ever got to tell you that, formally.” And Shiro extends his hand in the small, dark space between them. Keith leans away, not wanting to touch or be touched, but Shiro doesn’t retract his hand—he leaves it there and peers over at Keith, waiting, a tiny furrow developing between his brows.

The silence lengthens, with Keith still shrunk in his seat like a wary cat. He’s not a trusting creature, as tempting Shiro’s grasp looks. Keith manages, again, “Get out of my car.”

Shiro drops his hand and sits back, fighting a frown. He’s trying to salvage his charm. “I have to say, the first time I realized the red Monte Carlo in the parking lot was yours, I laughed.”

“Go. Get out.”

“Totally unexpected, and also perfect for you. What I know of you, at least.”

At this point, Keith leans over Shiro, trying to open the passenger door so he can physically shove him out.

“Hey, did I do something?” Shiro asks, his hands going to Keith’s shoulders—Keith dives back to the driver’s seat to escape his grasp.

“Yeah, you climbed into my car uninvited!”

“I—yes, I did. But you seemed upset with me earlier. I wanted to talk to you about it.”

Keith shrugs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” _Liar. Liar._

There’s a long pause on Shiro’s end; Keith refuses to look him in the face, instead squinting out at the night beyond the idling car. “Well.” Shiro sighs. “Maybe we’re not friends.” The word _friends_ makes Keith’s ears witch—had Shiro thought they were that— _friends_? He’s got to be pretty liberal with his definitions, but the thought does make Keith’s stomach squirm in buried delight. “But I’m trusting you with my life in a couple of days.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And I’d like to know you’re not going to actively try to get me killed,” says Shiro, with a laugh.

“I’m not going to drive you off a cliff, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Shiro laughs again, and the sound reverberates in Keith’s chest. It is too charming, that sound—it doesn’t befit this new Shiro.

“You work for the Galra,” Keith says, or rather blurts. It must seem like a non-sequitur to Shiro, who raises a brow.

“Yes? We both do.”

Keith hadn’t considered that Shiro might think they’re here for the same reasons. Not that he’d bother explaining his situation. It’s not a good idea idea to give Shiro any more than he already has—trust, or information, or even time. “Why are you still in my car?”

Shiro leans back, looking him over, and Keith struggles not to ogle the way his jaw is cut like marble. “You know, I’m not sure.” There’s sheepishness in his voice when he adds, “I can’t help feeling a little stupid.”

 _Shiro_ feels stupid? Keith’s brain fires a million thoughts in a second: if Shiro’s embarrassed by the cold shoulder, he must’ve wanted something else from Keith when he decided to stop the car, and what was that thing he expected to get out of their conversation? Every instinct for self-preservation Keith has is screaming for him to run at the thought of getting to know Shiro better, but another voice penetrates from his subconscious, murmuring hopefully, _maybe Shiro wants it too._

Keith swallows hard, hands gripping the steering wheel. Shiro lets out a tremendous sigh, then the passenger door clicks open. He’s getting out, he’s leaving, finally—except now, Keith doesn’t want him to go. Not completely.

“If I drove you off a cliff, I’d have to drive myself off the cliff, too.”

Shiro looks back at him with one foot out of the car, and smiles. “And you don’t want to do that?”

“Not yet.”

Another one of Shiro’s deep, masculine chuckles. Keith feels an agitation that makes him want to punch Shiro in the chest, but he doesn’t think it’s anger. Keith knows what anger feels like. “I’ll see you around?” Shiro asks.

“You’re pretty screwed if you don’t.”

Shiro smiles again. “I think I might be screwed either way.” Then he steps out of the car and vanishes into the dark parking lot, leaving Keith’s heart to pound for another ten minutes, until he settles down enough to finally drive home.

 

 

 

 

 

The look on Shiro’s face the first time he sees Keith drive—that’s not something Keith will ever forget.

The morning of Shiro’s first job with their crew, Keith shows up at the rendez-vous point, a parking garage, in the sedan he hot-wired for today’s job. It’s been two days since Keith last saw Shiro and he’s thought of little else, alternatively obsessing over his peculiarly aggressive friendliness and his parting line. What did that mean, that he was screwed either way? If Keith drove, and Keith would, then there was nothing to worry about. It had Keith wondering if maybe Shiro _was_ paying off a debt to the Galra, but then he’d admitted to working for them so lightly, as though it didn’t bother him at all.

Keith is confused. And subsequently, annoyed. The two always go hand in hand for him. And it’s compounded by the glaring reality that this would be a non-issue if he didn’t have a huge fucking boner for Shiro.

Or, you know. A little crush. What he calls it depends on how much denial he’s experiencing on a given day.He obsesses because—and he knows this, he’s brutally honest with himself—he doesn’t have a lot else going on. The other shit, his dad and the thing with the Galra, that’s even less fun to think about. So here Keith is, stuck overanalyzing his crush on a guy who might not be the person he thought, forcing himself to mold his continued interest into contempt.

The parking garage’s elevator opens and Shiro steps out. Keith glares at him in the rearview. He’s ten minutes early. They’re not supposed to be early.

Shiro has a duffel bag at his side, which he carries wordlessly up to the trunk of the car. Keith pops it for him. The _thunk_ the bag makes when Shiro drops it suggests it contains firepower.

Shiro comes up alongside the car and climbs into the passenger seat, asking, “Mind if I join you?” Unlike a few nights ago, he waits for Keith to nod before he sits down—though that nod was a _yes, I do mind,_ not a _yes, go ahead_. The goddamn English language, everybody.

So Keith says nothing. He doesn’t even glance sideways. It’s easy to hide behind his sunglasses.

“Did you have a good weekend?” Shiro asks lightly.

Okay: Keith looks at him. He’s being too fucking weird to ignore—maybe that’s his plan? But that just makes Keith wonder, again, what it is Shiro wants from him.

Shiro gives him a half-smile and reaches into his pocket. “You okay?” He pulls out a rubber mask and places it in the glove compartment. Lance’s whining about ski masks means they’re going as creepy clowns today.

“You’re early.”

“Is that a big deal to you?”

“It’s a liability.”

“To you?”

Keith shoots him a glare. Shiro knows what he’s talking about, so he must just be an asshole. But he doesn’t seem it—his voice is achingly warm, the way he says it.

When Keith says nothing, Shiro asks, “You want me to leave and come back in ten minutes?” So now Keith sounds like an idiot. Great.

“No, I don’t care.”

“Great,” says Shiro, his smile broadening. He reaches into another pocket and removes—a gun. Just a sidearm, but Keith stiffens. If Shiro notices, he doesn’t mention it. He begins to take the gun apart, piece by piece, barely even paying attention to what he’s doing. He must have done it a million times. “Why do you idle why you’re waiting? Aren’t you drawing attention to yourself?”

Keith frowns and glances in the rearview. As far as he can tell, no one’s entered the garage since he arrived except Shiro. They chose the top floor of a parking garage attached to a medium-sized office building, and there aren’t many cars around. The employees shouldn’t be leaving for lunch for another couple of hours. Though, if someone did have to step out, a bright red car idling in the lot might be more memorable than they’d like.

Keith turns the key in the ignition. The car goes quiet.

Shiro doesn’t say anything, not at first. Maybe he’s above gloating. Keith watches him clean the gun out of the corner of his eye. The silence extends between them and Keith dares to think he might be free, that he can pass the next few minutes pretending to be alone, that Shiro wants nothing more to do with him.

“How long have you been working for the Galra?” Shiro asks.

Fuck. “Why do you want to know that?”

Shiro is bold enough to smile. “Still trying to get a conversation out of you.”

“Do you tell your family that you sell sandwiches or that you rob banks?” The question lashes out of Keith from god-knows-where. It takes Shiro by surprise, too, prompting him to sit back and regard Keith with a suspicious twinkle in his eye. Makes Keith wonder if there’s anything he could say to make Shiro get angry with him, or if this guy is just a particularly personable lump of granite.

“I don’t tell them much of anything. I’m sure you understand that.” At Keith’s glare, he explains, “You don’t strike me as a big sharer. Which is why I’m trying not to take the cold shoulder personally.”

Keith attempts to deflect some of his more obvious annoyance by slumping down in his seat and fumbling with his sunglasses.

Shiro starts putting the gun back together. He’s careful, he knows what he’s doing, only Keith can help but noticing stiffness in his right arm. Did he hurt it? Does that have something to do with the scar across the bridge of his nose? That’s always been a point of curiosity for Keith, though he isn’t a naturally curious person. Keith would search for similar scarring on Shiro’s arm, but his leather jacket and gloves cover every inch of skin on his torso. He’d always worn long sleeves at Daddy Zee’s, too, and latex gloves for handling food.

Not that any of that matters. Keith doesn’t care what happened to Shiro’s arm—shouldn’t, anyway.

“I’ve worked for them long enough,” says Keith, after a while.

“What’s long enough? Years?”

“A few.” This might be easier if it were just a matter of reclassifying Shiro as a ‘coworker,’ but the crush thing, that’s what compounds the bullshit of the process. He doesn’t wonder about the lives Lance and Pidge and Hunk lead beyond the job they do together; those relationships end when he accepts his share of the money. But he can’t do that with Shiro, because he’s already wondered, and now an opportunity presents itself for him to know. The trap is easy to fall into, and Shiro seems to invite it. So Keith asks, “What about you?”

Shiro looks up from the gun, the corners of his lips turned up. “Less than a year. Are you going to haze me?”

“Did you work at Daddy Zee’s first?” Yeah, now Keith isn’t holding back, and questions he didn’t even know he had leave his lips before they cross his mind.

“I did,” says Shiro, still with that tiny smile. “How’d you know that?”

Keith shrugs.

“Who’s the second pulled pork sandwich for?”

That is a glaringly non-business-related inquiry, and Keith’s brain short-circuits briefly considering how Shiro could barrel into a discussion of their personal lives with such nonchalance.

Then Shiro reminds him, “You did ask about my family.”

Right, fine. Maybe he owes Shiro some slack. “It’s for my dad.”

“What does he think you do?”

“I’m a driver.”

“Like a chauffeur? Funny.” Shiro slots the last of his gun’s innards back into place with a neat click, and he has a complete sidearm again. He notices Keith’s staring, finally. “You’re not a fan, huh?”

Keith clears his throat and glances out the window. “Not my area.”

“Just as well.” Shiro slips the gun away. “They’re one of the more evil things humans have created. Murder machines. We’d be better off without them, as far as society goes.”

Keith has spent six years working for the Galra, so he’s got a decent idea of how they operate. He’s overheard his fair share of conversations between lackeys, watched the management shift around, seen them fail and succeed. He knows a lot about the organization’s inner workings and what its strategies are, as much as he ever cared to learn. And in all that, he’s never once heard a Galra employee call guns _evil_ , or suggest the world might be better served without them.

Bizarre, watching Shiro clean his weapon with the same degree of comfort and expertise you’d expect a surgeon to have in handling their patients, all the while spouting staunchly non-violent rhetoric.

He catches the look Keith is giving him and grins. “Is that weird for you to hear?”

“From someone like you, yeah.”

“To be fair, Keith, you don’t know me very well.”

Keith swallows hard. If only his stomach didn’t flip at the almost-winking smile Shiro is giving him. _I don’t want to know you, I just want to fuck you a little,_ he tells himself, in lieu of telling Shiro. Though, the reassurance he gets from that is limited, just enough to stop him from turning red. Small victories.

Keith is rescued from a response by the opening of the elevator. Pidge emerges, exactly on time, her duffel in tow.

They have to wait another five minutes for Lance, but Pidge gets into talking over the details of the job with Shiro, leaving Keith to swallow his feelings—except calling them feelings is generous. Impulses, more like. Whatever. The point is: he has time to get over what just happened before Pidge taps him on the shoulder and says, “We’re ready. Let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

 

Keith can’t say if, inside the marbled walls of First Street Federal, their crew is having the worst job of their careers, or their biggest score yet. Today he finds tuning out thoughts of what’s going on inside the bank even easier than usual, because he can’t stop recalling snippets of his and Shiro’s conversations, playing them over and over in his head. They match the rhythm of the nostalgic pop punk tune he’s chosen to pass the time.

 _To be fair, Keith, you don’t know me very well_.

Is he deluded in thinking Shiro has shown a special interest in him? Stopping him in the car the night after the meeting, and now showing up early to a job, asking personal questions. Would he be as suspicious if he didn’t _want_ Shiro to show a special interest in him, on a stupid, visceral, carnal level?

When they pulled up to the bank, he set the iPod meticulously to 0:00 on his chosen track, waited for the signal, and hit play as Pidge, Lance, and Shiro threw open their doors—and then Shiro had _stopped_.

He turned back to Keith and opened his mouth to say something—who knows what, it’ll be one of those things Keith wonders about for the rest of his life—because Keith’s stomach went leaden and he’d snapped, “What are you doing?”

“Holy shit,” Lance groaned.

“You messed up his count,” said Pidge, while Keith scrambled for his iPod, knocking it under his feet in his haste. The song had been playing for nearly six seconds, and it went on, drums beating out an angry rhythm while they argued over the music.

Shiro looked around the car like they’d all just grown elf ears. “Excuse me?”

“There’s no stopping once the song starts,” Lance said. “It’s like, a thing.” He punched Keith in the arm. “Just restart it!”

“I’m working on it!” The iPod was just an inch out of reach. He strained for it, probably looking like a tool with his head by his knees.

“Don’t think anything of it, okay?” Pidge told Shiro confidentially, and Keith could hear the layer of exasperation under her voice. 

Shiro remained painfully confused in that moment, judging by the nervous chuckle he let out in lieu of speaking, but he didn’t seem to take it hard. By the time Keith got his fingers around the iPod and sat back up, Shiro was smiling—smiling at Keith.

There was something quietly charmed in that smile, something bordering on smugness but without so much condescension; the way the corners of Shiro’s mouth turned up seemed to say, _well, aren’t you something?_

Keith brought the song back to 0:00 and Lance hollered for the three of them to go, _now_. Shiro didn’t make the mistake of hesitating a second time.

For Keith, it’s hard to believe this happened just a minute and a half ago. Shiro’s smile in that moment seems museum-quality in its delicacy and significance.

He sees the smile in sepia tones and hears, again, _To be fair, Keith, you don’t know me very well_. He swallows hard.

The bank’s alarm goes off and a chill runs up Keith’s spine. In the rearview mirror, the bank’s front doors swing open and three masked figures pour out, distinguishable by their heights. Pidge moves faster than Lance and Shiro even when burdened with a sack full of cash, which makes Keith snort to himself.

“Okay, Keith,” says Shiro, settling into the passenger seat. Keith can’t remember if they ever agreed on him sitting upfront. Doesn’t seem right. “Time to show me what you can do, huh?”

Keith grits his teeth, skips ahead to the next song, and hits the gas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But oh, the look on Shiro’s face the first time he sees Keith drive. It’s as good as the smile—better, even, maybe. Makes Keith think some fucked up things, makes him think that he’d like to get Shiro making that face over and over again, in a different context or two, that he’d like to thoroughly blow his mind and also maybe, him.

Funny how the weird parade of sexual thoughts through Keith’s head makes him drive faster than usual—that is, very fast. By the time they get back to the warehouse, even Lance and Pidge are looking drawn, and Shiro’s wide-eyed astonishment has turned into another feeling entirely. 

“Just throw up if you need to throw up, Shiro,” says Pidge, sympathetic.

“Nope. I’m good, I’m fine!”

Lance gives Pidge a look. “Was I this bad my first time?” She nods and continues patting Shiro on the back from a safe distance, in case he decides he’s not actually fine and loses his breakfast against the exterior wall of the warehouse. He braces himself there, head low and eyes closed, inhaling shuddering breaths; Keith leans against the same wall a few meters away, watching all this go down with what’s supposed to be a decent poker face, but he thinks his glee might be bubbling to the surface.

He catches Shiro peering sideways at him over one of those thick biceps, and turns his head up to the overcast sky. “We should go ahead and get inside. It’s going to rain.”

“Don’t worry, beefcake, _we’ll_ carry the score inside for you,” Lance simpers to Shiro.

Inside, Sendak is waiting to snap up the money and carry it into the office for counting, but not before he casts a wary eye (just the one—today’s eyepatch is purple velvet) around the room and asks, “Where’s Shirogane?”

 _Shirogane._ Keith hasn’t heard that one before.

“He’ll be right in,” Pidge says. Sendak clearly doesn’t like that answer, but he (rightly) assumes he won’t get anywhere by scolding the three of them for Shiro’s negligence, or whatever it is he’s mad about. Instead, he just sort of stands there, squinting at the door.

None of them have ever seen Sendak do this, and it’s fucking weird. Keith knows he’s not the only one who thinks so, because Lance mouths _what_ across the table to Pidge and, presumably, him. They don’t get very many team-building moments outside of their work, and Keith is at peace with that—hell, he prefers it—but it’s nice to snicker at Sendak while he’s not looking.

Shiro comes in, still pale from Keith’s driving, and Sendak bristles at the sight of him.

“Sorry.”

“Sit with the others,” Sendak barks, and he finally drags the cart with the money into the office.

Shiro seems equally bemused by Sendak’s behavior; once the four of them are alone, he mutters, “Did I get in trouble?”

“Did you jostle the stick up his butt or something?” Lance asks, and Pidge gags at the image.

“Not that I can remember.” Shiro glances at Keith. “I guess I’ve got a tendency to ruffle people’s feathers without realizing.”

There couldn’t be a worse moment for Keith to go pink, what with Lance and Pidge being right there, and knowing that only makes Keith blush harder. He refuses to look at any of them.

“You did great in there today,” Pidge says, unbridled in her friendly admiration. “That can’t have been your first bank job.” Something about Shiro’s presence makes everyone’s walls go down. It’s unsettling and dangerous and Keith wishes he knew how to stop it.

“It was, actually.”

“You knew exactly what you were doing, though!”

“I just do my research. But thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she says happily.

Lance has been looking Shiro over with a frown, and a part of Keith hopes he’s going to say something about the dangers of fraternization. But it’s Lance, and he should know better than to hope. “So what’s your weight lifting regimen like?” Lance asks, feeling his own noodle-y arms.

 _They’re obsessed with him, too_ , Keith realizes, the thought raising a bizarre melange of jealousy and terror in his throat. He wants to snarl and lay an arm over Shiro and say, _hey, I got here first,_ and he needs only a inch of distance from that impulse to know it’s fucked up. The clash of those instincts roars in his ears like the horrific sound of metal on metal, crunching together, and he doesn’t register any of Shiro’s weight training tips.

He thought the point of instincts is that you’re only supposed to get one for every situation. He survives off his instincts—he wouldn’t be alive without them—they come to him loud and strong and rarely ever wrong. Dissonance isn’t frustrating, it’s catastrophic.

When the counting is done and they’ve each received their share, he makes to be the first one out, but he’s stopped by the thunder of Sendak’s voice: “You.” Keith freezes in place. Lance whistles under his breath, so Keith knows Sendak is talking to him before he even turns around. “Haggar wants to see you.” Sendak gestures to the office. Great.

Keith makes no secret of his annoyance, stomping over to the office, as best as he can stomp anywhere. Now he can hear Lance giggling; double great. Maybe he should be more scared of his psycho creepy mafia boss, but he’s been working for the Galra for so long now he feels more caution than fear. He likes to think the worst they could do is kill him, and he wouldn’t mind that, though he knows that’s a rosy view of the Galra’s depravity.

Haggar waits for him, seated at her desk with a single lamp on. He can only see her hands move, fingering a silver cigarette case.

“Yeah?” he says.

She doesn’t speak for a long moment, and Keith’s brazen confidence loses its sheen. He shrinks an inch. She waits until he’s sufficiently intimidated to say, “Your debt is almost settled.”

Suddenly Keith’s heart is pounding. “How many more jobs?”

“Just one.” She clicks the cigarette case open, and he thinks he sees a flash of something in there that isn’t cigarettes. “However, I wanted to extend your offer of employment.”

“No thanks.”

“It includes a salary increase, as you will no longer be paying back the family.”

“No thanks,” he says again, firmer than before.

Haggar is quiet again for a while. She clicks the case closed and places it on the desk. “You have a gift. If you stopped, it would only be a waste.”

“Yeah, I’m fine with that.” Of all the ways Keith has been tempted lately, this is the least enticing. After days of swimming in confused semantics, he could live on the certainty in the phrase _one more job_.

Again, Haggar says nothing. The silence stretches on.

“Can I go?” Keith manages, heart rate still frantic.

She picks up the cigarette case. “Yes.” And that’s it: he slips out of the office into an empty warehouse.

Outside, it’s begun to rain, just as Keith predicted. He jogs toward his car, keeping his head down. That proves to be a mistake, because he’s only a couple of feet away by the time he looks up and sees Shiro sitting on the hood.

“Hey there,” he says, pushing the sopping wet hair from his eyes. “My battery’s dead. Mind giving me a ride home?”


	3. end

 

 

“Why do you keep showing up in my passenger seat uninvited?”

Shiro buckles in, wearing a civil half-smile. “I can’t request an Uber show up at the secret warehouse lair, sorry.”

“Whatever,” says Keith, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Just pull up the directions on your phone.” That’s his way of saying he doesn’t want Shiro to talk. Silence might be his only means to surviving this ride—that and the darkness obscuring the details of Shiro’s face as they hit the road. Take away his voice and words and looks, and Keith might forget he’s there at all, and his magnetism won’t take effect.

Therein lies the danger of sharing a car with Shiro. At worst, it leaves Keith riddled with anxiety. At best, a little bit turned on in mixed company.

There’s no telling where tonight’s adventure will land him, emotionally, or physically—the GPS directions Shiro flashes at him shows their final destination in a neighborhood Keith’s never visited.

He considers laying down the law, barking _no chit-chat_ or something, but Shiro has proven invulnerable to rudeness. So Keith chooses total lockdown, instead.

And it works for a while. The first several minutes of the ride pass quietly, apart from the tires on the pavement and the occasional turn signal. Then Keith notices Shiro isn’t just holding the handle above the window—he’s gripping it as though his life depended on it.

“What the hell, are you _scared_?”

“Hmm?” says Shiro, half an octave higher than normal.

“What are you holding on for?”

“Oh—that’s just a habit—”

“No it’s not,” Keith shoots back, knowing this for a fact.

Shiro sighs heavily, and seems to relax as they reach a red light. “I… didn’t know if you were going to start driving like you did before. I wanted to be—prepared—”

“I’m not going to drive like that when we’re not in a chase!”

Keith is stating an obvious fact, and Shiro must know it’s an obvious fact. But he keeps his eyes trained on the dark road again and swallows hard, Keith watching the apple of his throat bob. That whole nauseous thing earlier, the color gone from his face…

Keith starts to laugh. A chuckle at first, and then it grows into a cackle, and leaves him grinning when he says, “That chase really shook you up. You big tough guy, now you’re clinging to the handle while I’m doing forty.”

“I’ve never been in a getaway car before,” says Shiro, sounding like he doesn’t yet know whether to laugh along or be insulted.

“You said that was your first job, was it your first ever criminal activity too?”

“You know very well no one else drives like you.”

The grin slides off Keith’s face. Driving is a good excuse not to glance at Shiro, but he can’t avoid hearing how his voice has softened. Keith clears his throat. “You sound like Haggar.”

It’s an offhanded statement muttered under Keith’s breath, but it peaks Shiro’s interest. “I do? What does that mean?”

“You don’t actually sound like her. Like vocally,” says Keith, a poor attempt at deflection. His throat tightens, and he wishes it’d close up, because that might stop him from letting the details of his and Haggar’s conversation slip.

Shiro laughs softly. “I know.” The sound of Shiro’s gentle laughter makes Keith’s stomach do a weird thing, the kind of thing that he might give a frilly name to if he were thirteen and hung up on a schoolyard crush. But he’s not, so it’s just _a weird thing_. “What’d she want to talk about when she held you back before?”

“Just…” In his periphery, Keith can see Shiro relax until he lets go of the handle. _Trusting me_. _He trusts me._ “The next job is my last one.”

Shiro’s head tilts curiously. “You’re quitting?”

“Not exactly.” If only Keith were someone who spent more than a half-second on an average decision, he could’ve stopped himself from telling Shiro his goddamn life story. But Keith’s not that guy: his animal instinct to trust Shiro back makes the call before his paranoid loner tendencies can scoop it up and put it to bed. “My debt will be paid off.”

There’s a pause before Shiro says, “Ah.” And it’s the most neutral _ah_ in the world. Keith has no idea what to make of it. He barrels through his explanation to avoid lingering in uncertainty.

“Haggar was trying to get me to stay on and work for her. Said I had a ‘gift’ and I’d be wasting it if I didn’t. So that’s what I meant about you sounding like Haggar.”

Shiro remains quiet long enough that Keith sneaks an awkward look at the GPS in the hope that their destination is miraculously around the corner, which it’s not. The sound of Shiro’s voice makes him exhale a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “You don’t want to keep driving for Haggar?”

“I already said, next job is my last one. What do you think?”

“There’s a lot of money in it. Even if you just did a few jobs without having to pay any back, you’d…” Shiro sounds faraway when he trails off. It’s strange to hear him talk about this like it’s a hypothetical when he’s making that kind of money for himself, but maybe thinking about his own future fortune is what’s got him distracted.

“I don’t care about the money.” He has almost every dollar he’s made driving for the Galra stored under a floorboard in his room, with a few thousand bucks sewed into the lining of his jacket in case of emergency.If he needs to run or pay someone off.

“What do you care about, then?”

Keith thinks about his answer for a second. That’s all it takes. “Nothing.”

Shiro laughs that laugh again, the one that makes Keith’s stomach do the thing. In another life, Shiro must’ve been a movie star or a politician or something. It’s the only explanation for the likability he oozes. “Seriously? Not even your car?”

Keith glances around at the darkened interior of his Monte Carlo. Empty coke cans and dirty clothes litter the backseat. “I could leave it if I had to.”

“Leave it and go where?”

Keith shrugs. “You know.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“You don’t have an evacuation plan? You never think about what you’d do if everything went to shit?”

“I do,” says Shiro, struggling to keep the levity in his voice. “Everyday.” Keith gets the feeling he’s struck a nerve, and recoils from that feeling. Manipulation is not his bag. “But my plan doesn’t involve leaving.”

Keith blushes. “You wouldn’t run?”

“There are ways of running that don’t involve leaving.”

He has to think about that one for a second. “What, like snitching?”

“Sure, that’s one, but the last Galra snitch ended up scattered across five counties, and I like my body in the singular format.”

Keith snorts and says, “Yeah, me too,” not hearing how it sounds until the words have left his mouth and his soul is leaving his body. “I mean.” Except he can’t figure out what he did mean. Fuck.

Shiro has managed not to laugh, somehow, but Keith can tell even in the dark of the car that he’s biting back an enormous grin. “My building’s the one on the corner.”

Keith has barely registered the change in surroundings, but he blinks and the street is lined with multi-family homes and two or three small apartment complexes, one of which is Shiro’s. By the look of it, this place befits the fry cook more than the bank robber.

His cheeks still hot, Keith brings the car to stall, and Shiro pops open the door. “Thanks for the ride.” He reaches over and, in a casual, friendly gesture, meant to underline the thanks or whatever, touches Keith’s knee. Only, it’s more like the spot just above his knee, and it’s more of a tiny squeeze than a touch.

Shiro gets out of the car and shuts the door behind him. A moment later Keith hears the creak and bang of the apartment building’s door swinging shut; he isn’t looking because his eyes are glued to the dashboard, his lips parted, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

Keith sits idling outside the building for another five minutes and even when he starts to drive home, he can still feel Shiro’s hand on his leg, warm through the fabric of his jeans, a warmth that fills him to brimming.

 

 

 

 

The next morning, Keith wakes up to the smell of bacon. That smell can only mean one thing, in this apartment: Dad is having a good day.

In the last year, good days have grown scarce. When his father got sick the first time, it didn’t feel like anything had changed in a major way. Their otherwise happy life drummed out the extra doctor’s appointments and occasional fainting spell, and his mother was still around to shield Keith from the worst of it. Months passed and the news came that the cancer had gone, and they thought they’d put the worst behind them.

Then Mom died and the Galra happened. Keith should’ve expected that remission would follow a couple of years later, because the remaining glimmer of stability in his life needed to be stomped away by whatever cosmic force has it out for him.

The disease hit Dad harder the second time. So, good days have grown scarce. Just seeing Dad lucid wakes a feeling in Keith he’d forgotten he could experience, and to walk into the kitchen and find him at the stove in his bathrobe, cooking bacon… Keith might be a kid again. He might feel nineteen instead of thirty-five.

“How many pieces do you want?” Dad asks. Keith sinks into a chair at the kitchen table.

“How many do you have?”

“Enough, I hope. There’s scrambled eggs, too.”

“With cheese?”

Dad grins over his shoulder. “What do you think?”

They eat together, a good meal, with what might seem like a stilted conversation to an outsider, but this is the most they’ve talked in weeks and, for two Kogane men, it constitutes an epic accomplishment. Keith tells the usual lies about what he does with his day and Dad rags on the current Jeopardy champion and the mayor—he passes a lot of time watching television and they don’t have cable.

“There’s a crime problem in this city,” says Dad, jabbing his fork into his eggs. His portions are significantly smaller than Keith’s, but at least he’s eating them. “Did you see about those robberies? A whole slew of bank robberies, and they think it’s the same crew but they can’t catch ‘em.”

Keith takes a long gulp of orange juice. Poker face. “I didn’t see that.”

“You should watch out when you’re driving. It’s dangerous.”

“Sure.”

“I’m serious, kid.” Dad leans toward him. Keith can see a nick where he cut himself shaving, but at least he tried this morning—Keith has gotten used to his perpetual five o’clock shadow. “If something happens to you—”

“Dad.” There’s a pang in Keith’s chest, and the good feeling drains from him. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. That shit’s like, one-in-a-million.”

Dad sits back in his chair and sighs. “One too many.” When he’s not smiling you can see how sick he is; it shows in the lines of his face.

“I haven’t died yet,” Keith announces, and it might be the only true thing he’s said. He clings to that.

“Your mother would holler at you for cussing.”

Keith gets up to take his plate to the sink. “And what are you going to do?”

Another sigh. “Nothing, apparently.”

At the sink, Keith stands with his back to his father for a moment, and he collects himself. Shuts his eyes. When he turns around, he needs to be ready. “I’m quitting my job soon.”

Immediately he feels stupid for building that up in his head—Dad doesn’t know what this means, about the Galra and the money under the floorboard. Way back when, he’d wanted Keith to stick with school and land some white collar job, and bump their name up the socioeconomic ladder. To him, Keith’s driving pays the bills, but he can’t brag about it to his buddies.

So of course he takes the news with a nod and an small interested grunt before shoveling a forkful of eggs into his mouth. Around the bite, he asks, “You got another one lined up?”

“Not yet. But I will.”

“You’re gonna be unemployed?”

“I have savings. We’ll be fine.”

Dad chews, literally and figuratively, then shrugs. “Your choice, kid.”

Keith’s back pocket vibrates. As he suspected, it’s the Galra burner, and he flips the phone open to read the text with the time for their next meeting—sooner than he expected.

“You get a new phone?” asks Dad, squinting.

“It’s for work. So I don’t have to give fares my real number.” That particular lie he’s rehearsed a hundred times. He shoves the burner back into his pocket. “I gotta go. I’ll catch you later.”

Keith hears his father echoing, incredulous, “ _Catch you later?_ ” as he jogs out the front door.

 

 

 

 

Lance is the first person to say what they’re all thinking.

“Is it just me or did they call us back here like, kind of early? I mean, we just wrapped up the last job yesterday…”

Pidge’s agreement is obvious in her tone, and in the way she keeps eyeing the office door curiously. “It could be this one is time sensitive, for some reason.”

Keith doesn’t know how to feel about the pace of this, his final job. On the one hand, the sooner it goes down, the sooner he’s out of here, onto whatever is next. On the other hand, he finds himself glancing down the table at Shiro.

Shiro doesn’t have anything to add to the speculation, it seems, but neither does Keith, so it’s hard to blame him.

Failing to sound non-confrontational, Keith asks Shiro, “How’d you get here with your battery dead?” With time to think about it, Keith had come to the conclusion that Shiro cooked up this story to get a ride home with him, like he’d shown up early to the rendezvous for no particular reason. Keith is searching for any crack in Shiro’s exterior, or perhaps for his lie to fall apart altogether.

Shiro blinks in surprise. Pidge answers before he can. “I gave him a ride.”

“ _You_ gave him a ride?” say Lance and Keith at the time. They exchange glares across the table. Keith had briefly forgotten that the Shiro obsession didn’t end end with him. Their jealousy in that moment might be the only thing Lance and Keith have ever had in common.

Shiro wears a lip-biting smile. “She did.”

“And I got to meet Tesla,” says Pidge happily. A long silence follows in which Lance and Keith are both trying to figure out how this is possible, and what it has to do with Shiro, until Pidge fills them in: “Tesla is Shiro’s cat.”

“You named your cat Tesla?” says Lance.

“You introduced her to your cat?” says Keith.

Shiro laughs. “Lot of questions. I feel like I’m on _Sixty Minutes_.”

Keith finds himself feeling—embarrassed, again. Up until Shiro entered his life, that wasn’t an emotion he knew intimately; now it’s one he rarely shakes. But he looks like a fool, doesn’t he, thinking the knee squeeze and the cryptic little phrases and the smiles could mean anything, when he’s just another face in a crowd of admirers. Just a stupid, fanciful kid. Shiro can probably see it in his face, how stupid and fanciful Keith is, he probably goes home and laughs about it to his nerdy cat. 

Imagine that, getting humiliated by a guy with a cat named Tesla. 

“I think it’s a great name,” says Pidge, and Lance snorts.

“Of course you think it’s a great name. I’m surprised you didn’t name your cat that.”

“I don’t _have_ a cat. My brother is allergic.”

Keith scowls and picks paint off the tabletop, and he thinks he’ll just pass the whole meeting that way, pouting over his wounded ego. An odd chill runs up his neck; he looks up and finds Shiro watching him while Pidge and Lance continue their back-and-forth. He raises his eyebrows, not quite smiling, and it’s—suggestive. Even if Keith has no fucking clue what the suggestion is. 

So maybe Keith isn’t as fanciful as he thought. 

Doesn’t make it any clearer what’s actually going on between them, but at least he feels less embarrassed. Embarrassment makes him want to take a swing at a concrete wall. The emotion that’s replaced it makes him want to do… something else.

Lance slumps down in his chair. “We’re not even supposed to learn personal stuff about each other.” He brings up a good point—jealousies aside, giving rides and meeting cats are activities in violation of the Galra policy against fraternization. Their bosses barred them from learning one another’s full names, and now both Keith and Pidge know where Shiro lives.

“It’s just a cat,” Pidge mumbles, though she knows better. An uncomfortable silence falls around the table. They’re all thinking the same thing for the second time today: it’s not just a cat.

Shiro breaks the silence to utter blasphemy. “How are we supposed to work together if we can’t talk to each other?”

A smile cracks across Pidge’s face. Lance appears to be thinking it over and leaning toward blasphemy.

Keith’s no stickler for the rules. This one just happened to line up with what he wanted, which was to be left alone by the Galra and all their associates, so he’d followed it. But that’s what he _wanted_ , past tense. What Keith wants right now is sitting to his right, suggesting fraternization isn’t such a bad thing and wearing the hell out of a skin-tight black tee-shirt. 

Not that he’s completely convinced, not yet. He’s just… on his way to being persuaded. It would be a nice final _fuck you_ to the Galra, wouldn’t it, if he and Shiro took team-building to its logical extreme. 

The office door finally opens, and Sendak emerges, and the mirth shared by their little crew dies in its infancy. 

“Where’s Haggar?” Lance asks, peeking back into the office.

“Not here.”

“Haggar’s always here when we get the plans for a new job,” says Pidge.

“You’re not getting plans for a new job.” Sendak slaps an aerial photograph up on the dry erase board. Keith has always thought it was hilarious how they used a dry erase board, like they’re in SAT prep and not planning to steal half a million dollars in cash. “This is a train yard on the south side of town. Two days from now, we’ll be conducting a… transaction, there.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “You’re having us do something that isn’t a bank job?”

Lance’s eyes bulge. “Wait, what?”

“We can have you do whatever we want,” Sendak growls. “In two days, you’re going to make an important purchase for us. It’ll take an hour or two at most. You just need to arrive at the location, exchange the cash for the merchandise, and bring it back here.”

“What are we buying?” Pidge asks.

“You have no need to know that information.”

She rolls her eyes. “How are we supposed to check that we’re not getting grifted, then?”

Sendak stares at her for a long time. “It’s—weapons. Weapons for your next bank job.” 

Keith is having trouble wrapping his head around this—could it be that his last job won’t be driving?“Why do you need me?” he demands. “I’m a driver, I don’t do the other stuff—”

“You’ll do what Haggar asks you do to. Those are your terms.” Sendak’s single good eye circles the table, dishing out his sour look. “Frankly, this is child’s work. If you can’t pull it off, there will be consequences.” None of them find Sendak especially intimidating, and he must see the way his threats fail to penetrate. He barks, “CONSEQUENCES!” The volume surprises a squeak out of Lance. 

Sendak proceeds to walk them through the process of the buy, using his aerial photograph to show them the location, and reminding them every step of the way how stupid they’ll look if they can’t pull it off. He seems delighted by the concept of their failure, which strikes Keith as counterproductive. 

They break for the day with instructions on where and when to meet. Keith gets charged with jacking a couple of cars to get the goods out of there, a flimsy excuse to have him along. He can’t help but be suspicious of this weird task popping up the day after he refused Haggar’s job offer, except that this seems like the opposite of a punishment, like she’s letting him off easy. And he knows Haggar better than that. 

 

 

 

 

So Keith goes into the buy with hackles raised, determined that there will be no mistake forcing him to the Galra for another year. Crush or no crush, he’s graduating on time.

He wakes up in the middle of the night to steal the cars, brings them to the meeting point—an overlook a good forty-five minutes outside of town—one at a time, and then sits on a hood drinking shitty gas station coffee and watching the sun come up over the blue-green hills. The early October air nips at his ears and fingers until the warmth of the new day’s sun finds them.

Shiro is first to arrive, of course. Keith spies him walking up the narrow mountain road, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, like he’d walked the whole way here from the city. He grins when he sees Keith.

“How’d you get here?” Keith calls as Shiro approaches.

“I parked at a trailhead about a mile back. Figure it’s less suspicious if Pidge and I aren’t parked together.” He joins Keith on the hood of the car. “You been here long?”

Keith shrugs. The sun continues to rise. Out the corner of his eye, he watches Shiro taking it in.

“I’ve never been up here before.”

“Are you kidding?” says Keith. Shiro tosses him a curious look, and he realizes that might be—odd. It _is_ a remote lookout buried at the end of five miles of winding mountain road, nearly an hour out in the country. All he can say in defense of himself is, “Places like this are the only good part of living here.”

Shiro leans back against the window shield of the car, hands folded on his stomach. “So where are you going to go?”

“What?”

“Today’s your last day, right?” Keith nods. It is, in theory, despite the sinking feeling he has that things might not work out so neatly. “What are you going to do next?”

“I…” Keith glares at the landscape. “I don’t know yet.”

“And what about us?”

At the use of that word, _us,_ Keith goes stiff. What _us_ does Shiro mean, when there’s no _us_ , unless Keith has seriously underestimated the implications behind Shiro’s attention.

Shiro sits up and clarifies, bringing Keith’s brief rapture down around his ears: “Pidge and Lance and me. Do we never see you again, after today?”

Keith has wondered that himself, and he still doesn’t have an answer. If he waits long enough—if he waits until the end of this day—the question will answer itself, and that seems easier than admitting to himself he has any qualms about leaving this part of his life behind, severing every tie for good.

Looking at Shiro right now, he thinks he might regret that, and there’s very little he’s ever regretted. He’s had a mullet since he was fourteen. Regrets aren’t his style.

But what’s he gonna do? Write his number on the back of a cocktail napkin and slide it into Shiro’s pocket? This isn’t a movie, he isn’t stupid enough to put sex—the _possibility_ of sex—over freedom he’s worked toward for three years.

Keith fails to pry dishonesty out of himself. “I don’t know,” he tells Shiro. “It’s not that big of a city.”

“I guess that’s true,” says Shiro, with a smile. Keith can’t tell if he’s disappointed by that answer, but that’s just as well. There’s no point in looking for clues, now.

The sound of a car horn pierces the air, starting them out of peaceful quiet. Pidge’s car pulls into the parking lot, Lance waving wildly from the passenger seat.

Shiro suggests that he and Lance take one car while Pidge and Keith take the other. Lance flips his shit—it’s the first time he’s ever won the Shiro contest—and Shiro gives Keith a grin while they’re getting into the cars. It hits Keith that he’s deliberately showing each of them special attention—Keith with the early arrivals, Pidge with the cat, and now Lance with a private forty-minute bonding session. Keith can’t speak to Shiro’s intentions, and he’s not sure he cares, but it blows his mind that he could be this fucked for someone who operates so differently from him.

Keith doesn’t mind the car with Pidge; she sits cross-legged in the passenger seat with huge headphones on, listening to a podcast, and lets him play whatever music he wants through the car. They pass the first half hour of the drive like that, their not-talking somehow more companionable than if they’d tried to make conversation. He loses Shiro and Lance’s car on the highway, but they know where they’re going.

Pidge pops off her headphones in the middle of a banger, and has to shout over the bass to say, “Hey, can I ask you a question?” Keith turns the volume down enough that she doesn’t need to scream, his way of saying _yes_. “Do you think there’s something weird about Shiro?”

His first thought is _yeah_ , _of-fucking-course_ , but he can’t manage to be that candid with Pidge yet. He’s spent years hiding his every thought from his crew and he doesn’t know how to switch that off. “Why? Do you?”

Pidge pulls a face. “Isn’t that implied in my asking you the question?”

“What’s weird about him?”

“He just… he doesn’t act like the other Galra minions, and I don’t think he’s paying them back for anything.” She fidgets in her seat. “He’s trying to get close to us.”

“You didn’t seem to mind that a few days ago,” Keith points out, hypocritically, because he knows he doesn’t mind it.

“I’m not sure it’s a bad thing!” She leans toward him confidentially, though there’s no one in the car to overhear her. “Do you want to know my theory?”

“What’s your theory?” he asks, struggling not to grin.

“I think Shiro is staging a coup.”

“A coup?”

“A takeover!” She sits back, her eyes flashing excitedly behind her glasses. “That’s why Sendak doesn’t like him. He suspects it, that Shiro wants to oust Haggar and take over the operation—”

“Shiro’s only been working for the Galra for a few months.” Keith can’t imagine that kind of criminal ambition from Shiro, the guy who thinks guns are evil.

“So? He could be a plant from another crime family—do you know how many people would love to take Haggar down?” Keith forces a dry laugh. It’s obvious from the way Pidge says this that she’s one of those people.

“Maybe you’re right,” Keith says, really just hoping it’ll end the conversation sooner.

“If Shiro takes over, I bet he’d let us stop doing bank jobs.” The wistfulness in her voice causes physical pain in Keith’s chest. “I don’t know how I’d pay for MIT, but I could stop missing so many days. Lying to my mom is getting pretty annoying…”

 _Stop caring_ , Keith tells himself. _None of this matters to you. You’re out of here after today._

“It makes sense, though, doesn’t?”

They’re not far from the train yard, and Keith speeds up. “I guess. But he could just be a freak.”

“You think so? He’s like, _super_ charismatic.”

She’s right about that. Shiro’s charisma is unassuming, so clean you can forget it’s there, working to draw you in. The ambition Pidge sees in him isn’t naked; it wears a suit of personability. If Shiro’s as good of an actor as she thinks he is, he might just be pulling it off.

Keith dismisses her with a shrug. “That’s the entrance to the yard up there on the right. Send the other car a text, tell them we’re here.”

 

 

 

 

They do their bank jobs in daylight, but that’s nothing like the uneasy exposure of this train yard in the early morning. The four of them pick their way along the overgrown tracks, Pidge squinting at sides of the freight cars, looking for the number dictated to them by Sendak. Shiro and Lance each wear a backpack, the cash split between them. Keith was supposed to wear one, but he’d balked—too much liability in that. Hackles up, arms length.

“I sure love feeling like we could get popped at any second,” says Lance. He’s not good at making light of his nerves. They always show through. “Has anyone else noticed there’s a weird cat following us?”

He’s right: a black cat has been trailing them from where they parked, hanging back fifty yards but definitely watching them.

Pidge stops short by a rusted container. “This one!”

They let Shiro do the knock. The large door slides open a few inches, the metal squealing, and a face peers out at them. A light, girlish voice says, “Yeah?”

Shiro glances over his shoulder, realizes they expect him to answer, and clears his throat. He’s leading them, now, whether or not he likes it. “We have the money.”

The door flies open all the way. The face belongs to a woman Keith feels like he’s seen before, but he can’t place her. She has large eyes and wears her hair in a long braid starting on the very top of her head. “Okay. Let’s see it.”

“Let us see the merchandise first,” Shiro shoots back.

She smiles slyly. She was waiting for him to ask. “Sure. Come on up.”

Shiro slides the backpack off and hands it to Pidge, then climbs up into the train car. From what Keith can see, the woman is the only one inside, along with three crates that must contain the weapons. That doesn’t seem right—he knows how much money they brought today. No one would broker a deal this big on their own.

A chill runs up his spine. He scans the area, but there’s no sign of anyone else. The cat is gone.

The woman pops open each of the crates with a crowbar. Shiro peeks in each, and pulls a handgun from one. After looking it over, he determines, “It’s all real. There’s some good stuff in here. We’re set.”

“Perfect,” the woman chirps, smiling into her eyes. “Now show me yours.”

Shiro nods to Lance and Pidge, who step toward the car with the backpacks.

“Are you alone?”

Keith’s question stops everyone in their tracks. The woman looks him straight in the eye, and he bites back a hiss. “Sorry, sweetie,” she simpers. “What did you say?”

“Are you alone?”

“That’s a pretty personal question!”

“I meant, do you have any associates?”

She smiles blankly at him.

That’s it for Keith. “There’s something wrong,” he says, and drags Pidge away from the car by the back of her shirt. “Shiro, get down from there.”

“I’m sure everything is fine,” says Shiro, though he’s put his hands up. Idiot.

The woman finally sighs, the smile melting from her face. “No, it’s not.”

“Pretty boy’s right,” says a new voice, deeper voice behind Keith. He blinks and they’re surrounded: three other women emerge from behind the adjacent cars. One of them has the cat circling her feet, and the burly, deep-voiced one points a sawed-off shotgun at Keith’s chest. “Hands up, all of you.”

“I’ve never been on the other side of this situation,” says Pidge, more scandalized than scared, dropping her backpack.

“ _Pretty boy_?” shrieks Lance, also dropping his bag. “Are you talking about Keith? How could you be talking about Keith?”

“What do you want?” Shiro asks, slowly climbing out of the train car at the braid lady’s prodding.

“We’ll be taking the money and the guns,” says the third woman, who has another face Keith thinks he knows. There’s nothing especially remarkable about her—she wears her dark hair pulled back and doesn’t crack a smile—but this isn’t the first time she and Keith have met. He knows it. “Ezor, tie them up. Narti, watch the bags. Get them once they’re secured.”

“Yep,” the braid lady says, hopping down to the tracks. The cat lady creeps toward them, eyes glued to the backpacks. Keith is looking for exits—if he could just sprint between two of the women, get somewhere with cover from the shotgun—

“What are you going to do with us?” Pidge asks, a tremor in her voice, watching Ezor put a plastic tie around her wrists.

“I think I can answer that question, Pidge,” says Shiro. Keith just _knows_ , from the way he says it—he turns to watch Shiro remove something small and round from his pocket. Keith has no clue what it is, other than their ticket out of here.

A second later the air is flooded with smoke, Lance’s screams, and the shocked yelps of their captors, Shiro’s voice booming above it all: “ _Run!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boy am i having fun or WHAT


	4. coup

 

 

A river of warmth flows down Keith’s left arm. He doesn’t want to look, to see what’s wrong, not as long as he’s running. He’s halfway to the car now. He can make it. It’s probably just a flesh wound.

More gunshots—closer to him, this time. _Run harder. Run faster._ The gravel trips him and he catches himself on the side of train car, sending blinding pain up his arm. The rush of nausea makes him stop for a moment, long enough for Shiro to catch up. He’s got a pistol in hand and turns back to face their pursuers. He must be firing into a cloud of grenade smoke, but he’s sure as fuck firing—the din of it makes Keith clamp hands to his ears and start moving again.

Lance throws the driver’s door open on the SUV as Keith approaches, and he clambers inside. Pidge is already in the backseat, struggling to open the door for Shiro with her foot, since her hands are still bound. The backpacks with the cash in them are piled beside her.

“What the fuck is he doing?” says Lance, gesturing out the front window. Shiro has taken cover behind a crate and motions to the car, moving his index finger in a quick circle—Keith gets the signal, the keys out of his pocket and into the ignition, feeling grateful to be right-handed.

The SUV roars to life. Shiro fires twice at a figure emerging from the smoke, and the figure doubles over. The exit is behind them, so Keith throws the SUV into reverse and starts backing out.

Pidge thrusts her head in between the front seats. “Shiro’s not in yet—”

“I know!” Keith wheels the SUV around, making the open door flap, but now they’re lined up with the exit—he can hit the gas and not look back once Shiro’s inside. He narrowly avoids collision with their second vehicle in the turn, though maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea, to take out that car, make sure they’re not followed.

Shiro sneaks toward the SUV, staying low. A bullet whizzes over his head and hits the side mirror before ricocheting away. After that, no one makes a noise, not a whimper or a curse or a sob, not even a breath. They don’t dare breathe until Shiro is in the car, shutting the door, barking at Keith to _go_.

Keith has other ideas.

He twists around in his seat so he can talk to Shiro, prompting Lance to wail, “What, _what_ are you _doing_?”

“Shoot out the tires of the other car,” says Keith, ignoring him.

“What?”

“You should,” says Pidge, a light going on in her eyes. She’s smart. She gets it.

Shiro rolls down his window and leans out enough to aim, wincing. Another bullet whizzes by and he gives Keith a pleading look. But he fires four rounds at the back tires of their abandoned car, and Keith watches them deflate in the rearview.

He hits the gas. Whine like they did for him to drive, his passengers aren’t ready for what that means. His injury has him half-delirious, clinging to instinct because he can’t string a logical thought together. The difference in his driving that day is the difference between a horse in a derby and a horse fleeing a predator—the difference between running to be the fastest and running for your life. He doesn’t know when to stop. He’s afraid to look back. He’s just, _afraid_.

He’s speeding down a side road, putting distance between them and the train yard, when he hears voices talking around him, talking over his head, talking about him. Their words don’t penetrate the fog of fear.

The adrenaline starts to wear off. When it does, the pain in his arm bursts through the walls he’d built around it, so he could get out alive, and the feeling of that is more than he can bear. The left sleeve of his jacket is damp on his skin. Blood smears the steering wheel.

He slows the car and pulls over at some random spot, he doesn’t register where. The voices keep talking around him, echoing nonsense as he slumps over the wheel, passed out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keith wakes up on a couch. His first impression is something along the lines of, _fuck, that hurts_. He tries to isolate the ache—duller than it was when he passed out, but still profoundly uncomfortable—except he hurts everywhere, including in his neck, because he’s been lying on a couch for hours.

His memory returns to him slowly, in chunks, as memory often does after a deep sleep. The smoke grenade, running, blood. Driving until he couldn’t anymore. He remembers being woken up—Lance slapped him across the face—and the bright lights and antiseptic chill of a doctor’s office. But the details are hazy. Someone gave him morphine, he thinks.

“He’s awake.” Pidge’s voice. He blinks and sees her, or a shape that resembles her, moving across the room. “Shiro!”

As his eyes come into focus, he becomes rapidly aware of the fact that he has no idea where he is. It’s someone’s living room, that much is obvious from the television and the coffee table and the lumpy leather sofa that’s the cause of the crick in his neck. But he’s never been here before.

Pidge appears in the space above him, her eyes wide. “How are you feeling?”

“Where am I?”

“You’re at Shiro’s.” Right. That explains it. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I feel pretty shitty, to be honest.” Keith starts to sit up, and makes the mistake of moving his left arm. He groans.

“Don’t do that,” Pidge squeaks, helping him steady himself. The six inches above his left elbow are swathed in gauze.

“You did get shot,” says Lance’s voice. He pops around from behind the couch—a quick survey reveals that there’s a kitchen area back there, and a hallway that must lead to a bedroom.

“I did?” Keith manages, hoarse. Pidge and Lance exchange an incredulous look.

“How do you not remember?” Lance asks.

“I was busy.”

“Yeah, busy getting shot.”

“Did you slap me?”

The grin vanishes from Lance’s face. “Shiro—Shiro _told_ me to slap you.”

Shiro. Where is Shiro?

As soon as he has the thought, Shiro speaks in his calm baritone. “We needed to wake him up.” And there he is, standing at the end of the hall, a throw blanket tucked under his arm. “How are you doing?” he asks, bringing the blanket over to Keith, who’s confused by the gesture.

“I got shot.”

“It passed cleanly through your bicep and didn’t hit the bone,” says Pidge brightly, like that’s the greatest news ever, though it makes Keith’s stomach churn.

“How long have I been out?”

“About a day,” she replies. “The doctor that stitched you up—”

“The _vet_ that stitched you up,” Lance corrects.

“—she gave you a bunch of painkillers and you went to sleep the second we put you back in the car. Shiro carried you inside.”

Keith can only summon hazy memories of this. He shivers, hating to know he was vulnerable around these people he barely knows, that they held his life in their hands because he was stupid enough to get hurt and relinquish control. Now he’s sitting on a stranger’s couch in clothes that aren’t his with only a vague recollection of how he got here. It’s infuriating and sickening and _real_ , so real that none of the shit that happened before this—his weird crush on Shiro and his tentative friendship with Pidge—seems to matter. He’s back at square one, helpless, like he was three years ago when he first got mixed up with the Galra.

He clambers to his feet, waving away Pidge’s assistance. “I need to piss. Where’s your bathroom?”

Keith doesn’t miss the glance Shiro exchanges with Pidge before he replies, “Down the hall, last door on the left.”

Walking makes him feel lightheaded. He uses the wall to support himself until he’s in the bathroom and can brace himself against the counter. Here, finally alone, he takes a long look at himself in the mirror. His skin is sallow, and a long, thin bruise runs across his brow, likely from hitting his head on the steering wheel when he passed out. The unfamiliar grey t-shirt billowing around him bears the abbreviation U.S.M.C., meaning it’s Shiro’s. Someone went to a lot of effort cleaning Keith up, but their work was imperfect: he finds crusted blood under his fingernails and along his hairline as he fumbles through his ablutions.

After a few minutes he becomes insatiably paranoid about his injury and peels back the gauze to look at it. There are three small stitches on the entry wound and four on the exit. He puts down the toilet cover and sits for a while, staring at it. He’s going to have a scar, and not the kind you can lie about, claiming you fell or some other bullshit.

There’s no going back to his dad looking like this. He’d know something was wrong the moment Keith crossed the threshold.

He sits there, locked in indecision, until there’s a knock at the door and Shiro’s voice says, “Everything going okay in there?”

Keith swallows hard. He doesn’t know how to answer. He manages, “Uh.”

“Can I open the door?”

Keith locked it when he came in. The bathroom is small enough he can reach over and unlock it without getting up.

Hearing the click, Shiro pokes his head in first, then slips inside without opening the door completely. Maybe Pidge and Lance are watching and he wants to give Keith some privacy. It’s nice of him.

All this has been nice of Shiro. Opening his home, sharing his clothes. Keith remembers what Pidge said about Shiro carrying him inside, and in his head he can see himself looking like a rag doll in Shiro’s arms. Thinking about that a couple of days ago, he might’ve blushed—today he struggles to form any reaction at all.

Shiro leans against the door, looking down at Keith, his mouth a thin line. “Just wanted to check up on you.”

“I’m good.”

Shiro smiles half-heartedly. “You strike me as the kind of person who’d say they were good even if they weren’t, just to get out of answering the question.”

Keith blinks. “You were in the Marines.”

Shiro lets out something akin to a laugh, or maybe it’s an exasperated sigh. “I was, yeah.”

“That how you messed up your arm?”

Shiro looks at him for a long time. When he answers, his voice is soft: “Why do you always act like you’re not paying attention?”

If Shiro expects him to know the answer to that question, he’s sorely mistaken. Knowing would require a kind of introspection Keith isn’t ready to undertake. He has trouble imagining he’ll ever be ready to think about himself with rational distance.

Shiro sighs at Keith’s silence. “I’m sending Pidge and Lance home so you can get some quiet. Do you want to call your father?”

After a deep breath, Keith nods. “Thanks. Thanks for all this.”

“I feel like I should be thanking you.” Keith frowns, and Shiro elaborates. “I had a feeling something was off with the deal, but I was ready to go along with it so things didn’t escalate. Could’ve been worse if you hadn’t spoken up.”

Bad at receiving compliments, Keith shrugs, then winces at the twinge in his arm. “Maybe.”

Shiro opens the door and backs out of the bathroom, letting Keith witness the reassurance in his smile. “Stay for as long as you need.”

 

 

 

 

 

The thing that angers him, that really gets him fucking _going_ , is his jacket. A bullet hole and the resulting blood have ruined it beyond repair. After he gets off the phone with his dad— _I’m crashing with a friend, I’ll be back to take you to chemo, eat the burgers in the freezer—_ he stands in Shiro’s kitchen and glares at the offending damage, and mutters to himself, “Someone’s gonna pay for this.”

He can’t bring himself to throw the jacket away, though it stinks of blood. Shiro catches him staring at it over dinner that night and must realize he shouldn’t touch the thing, so it stays hanging off the back of a kitchen chair, like some grim war banner.

“You want to have some fun?”

The offer catches Keith off guard. The combination of intense painkillers and delivery pizza has him too nauseous to do more than note, in passing, that this sounds like innuendo.

When he looks over at Shiro, he’s holding up a video game controller.

Keith sinks onto the couch. “Do you have anything that’s not going to make me puke?”

“I… I’m not sure, but we can turn it off if you feel sick.”

Keith nods, until he notices Shiro offering him a controller. “No.”

“Sorry?”

The idea of putting his mind to work in any way seems futile tonight. “You play. I’ll watch.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I just—yeah.”

Shiro pulls a face, surprised, kind of amused. “Okay. Let me know… if you get bored?” He takes a seat on the couch, a couple of feet from Keith, who feels some weird shock at the audacity of that gesture.

They share the sofa, and it’s not awkward, despite Keith’s hesitance. Shiro boots up his game, casual in a t-shirt and joggers, taking swigs from a beer.

Keith eyes the drink. He doesn’t recognize the brand. It’s not the gas station beer his dad prefers. “You’re not gonna offer me one?”

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “Are you—you’re twenty-one?”

“We rob banks together, why are you asking if I’m twenty-one?”

Shiro blanches, turning back to the television. “I thought you were nauseous.”

“I have a condition. Beer’s good for my stomach.”

It’s half a joke, and gets a snort out of Shiro, though Keith can see he’s still tensed up. “I don’t think you can mix alcohol and Vicodin.” Keith rolls his eyes rather than admit Shiro’s rightness. “You’re not twenty-one, though, are you?”

There’s a note of anxiety in Shiro’s question that Keith can’t parse. “No. I’ll be twenty in a week.” He adds, as a stupid afterthought, “Why?”

Immediately he wishes he hadn’t, because Shiro’s lips part like he wants to answer with the truth but can’t bring it to the surface. He manages, vaguely, “You’re young. I didn’t know how young.”

“What are you, then? Eighty?” Keith shoots back, his defenses bristling, wanting desperately for Shiro to stop with his soft look, with the concern in his voice. “You’re not even thirty, are you?” He gets the sense he’s trying to convince Shiro of something just beneath the surface of the conversation. 

Shiro clears his throat. “I’m not, no.” His discomfort is palpable, and Keith doesn’t care.

“What are you? Twenty-five?”

“Twenty-six.”

“You’re six years older than me. That’s not that much. You’re young too. We’re both young.” Keith exhales. “Big fucking deal.”

There’s a moment of silence punctuated by the game’s loading screen music. Eventually Shiro seems to shrug it off. “You’re right.”

“Yeah, I am!”

“Sorry for suggesting you weren’t.”

Keith isn’t sure how they end up laughing, but suddenly they are, and it occurs to him that if he hadn’t gotten shot yesterday, this evening might approximate a date.

Earlier his crush felt—what, stupid? Meaningless? Like watching cartoons on the day his mother died—disconnected from the reality happening around him.

Sitting with Shiro on the sofa that night, he thinks he might’ve been misled. Harsh reality doesn’t render frivolity meaningless, it makes the trivial little things take on new meaning—after all, he doesn’t like watching cartoons anymore. When he looks at Shiro now he feels like he’s sinking. Like they’re taking on weight.

“What’s this game about?” Keith asks, to pull himself out of that feeling. Ultimately they’re just having a conversation, it doesn’t need to be more than that.

“Aliens,” says Shiro, sitting back.

“Good or bad?”

“Some good, some bad.”

Keith nods. “Sounds right.”

“You play as the captain of a ship…” And Shiro goes on, explaining the plot of this game to Keith, who’s mostly just interested in watching his mouth move. It doesn’t matter that he can’t wrap his head around some secondhand scifi epic. Shiro’s enthusiasm is entertainment enough—he’ll murmur expletives under his breath while he plays, and he always chooses the most civil dialogue option.

After a couple of hours spectating in comfortable silence, Keith’s head droops onto a throw pillow, and he struggles to keep his eyes open.

He must drift off at some point, because he wakes up and Shiro is closer than he was before. Close enough that Keith can smell the soap on his skin, and he’s sliding an arm around Keith’s waist—

Keith’s instincts betray him and he takes a swing at Shiro’s head. Shiro has to fling himself away to avoid the hit.

“Hey, hey! Relax! I’m just trying to help you get to bed—”

Keith’s eyes widen and he drops his fists, though his heart continues to pound, and the breaths come up short in his throat. “Sorry. Shit.”

“It’s fine—I’m sorry I snuck up on you.”

“I’m not sleeping on the couch?”

Shiro shakes his head. “I just put you on the couch last night because I didn’t want to move you around too much.”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

Shiro glances down and around, as though the answer were obvious. It seems stupid that Shiro would cram his bulky self onto this couch when it’s much more suited to someone Keith’s size, but the thought of a real bed, with a mattress and sheets et al, wins out over Keith’s penchant for self-sacrifice. He _did_ get shot yesterday.

“Just—walk to the bedroom with me in case I fall over.”

Shiro nods. They make the journey slowly, so that by the time Keith collapses (carefully) into Shiro’s bed, he feels like he’s hit the end of a Tolkien novel.

Shiro leaves briefly and returns with painkillers and a glass of water. “Do you need anything else?”

Keith peers up at him, feeling small. He shakes his head. “I can’t remember if I’ve thanked you.”

“You did,” says Shiro, almost smiling. “In the bathroom, earlier.”

“Right. Fuck, my head’s messed up.”

“That won’t go away for a while.” Shiro heaves a sigh. He’s speaking from personal experience. “Get some rest, all right?”

“I’ll try,” Keith murmurs, though Shiro’s already shut the door. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning, Keith is steadier on his feet, with more color in his cheeks.

He shouldn’t be surprised that Pidge shows up for breakfast, but he is. “It’s the weekend,” she says, when he asks why she isn’t in school. Then she steals a slice of his bacon. “I came over because we haven’t really talked about what happened.”

Shiro glances at them from the stove, where he’s flipping pancakes. “What do you mean by that?”

“Like, why haven’t we heard from the Galra _at all_? I mean, I know I haven’t—has either of you?”

“I haven’t,” Keith admits. Shiro told him about the radio silence a few hours after he woke up, and he’s checked his burner every couple of hours since, to no avail.

“Me either,” says Shiro. “Maybe they think—”

“That we’ve been eliminated,” Pidge interrupts, nodding. “I considered that, except that we’re just sitting around with their cash, aren’t we? Dead or alive, they’re not going to let that go.”

“They don’t seem super worried about it,” Keith grunts. He’s not sure if he’s ready to talk about the incident, even in this detached way. “Maybe it’s counterfeit.”

Shiro distributes a pancake onto each of their plates. “They still wouldn’t want their counterfeits flooding the market. It’s a liability if the fakes trace back to them. I think Pidge is right. Something is off.”

Pidge drums her fingers on the table. The vibrations makes Keith twitch. He douses his pancake in syrup and digs in.

“I noticed a car following me on my way here,” she says.

“You think they’re tailing you?” asks Shiro.

“Why would they do that?” Keith scoffs. He bristles at the thought of Galra watching them, and it’s easier to dismiss it as paranoia. This was supposed to be his _last job_.

Pidge’s brow furrows. “I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far in my theory.”

“How far have you gotten?” Shiro asks, settling into a chair across from them. He’s forgone the pancakes for a cup of black coffee.

Pidge takes a large bite, chews thoughtfully, and sits back in her chair with her eyes on the ceiling. Shiro tosses Keith a quick grin, which he returns. They both find her charmingly strange. “I think it might have been an inside job,” she announces.

Shiro and Keith exchange another look, this one not so mirthful. “What makes you say that?” Shiro asks.

She continues cutting up her pancake while she explains, creating a dozen little bites for herself. “They asked us to do this job that’s like nothing we’ve ever done before, and everything went about as bad as it could without anybody dying—did you notice how Sendak seemed ready for us to fail?” She slathers her plate in another layer of syrup. “And what’s _really_ weird, it was supposed to be Keith’s last run with us—”

“What?” Keith glares at Shiro. “Did you tell her?”

“No! Of course not—”

“I figured it out from context clues,” says Pidge, tiredly. “Anyway, since Haggar probably doesn’t want Keith to leave, and Keith _really_ wants to leave—”

Keith has his hands in the air now. This is ridiculous. Is he that obvious, or is Pidge more genius than he thought?

“—I figure maybe they wanted to scare him into staying. Or hold the cash over his head.” Pidge’s eyes are bright. “I think they thought we’d really fall for their trick, because if someone took the money, it’d be our fault—then Haggar could keep Keith in debt.”

“But we fought back,” says Shiro, frowning.

“Exactly! So what I can’t figure out is what they’re planning to do now. There has to be a contingency plan, there always is…”

Keith is sitting there, listening to them talk about him, his mouth hanging open. He gradually lowers his hands to his lap. He’d felt like he knew those women from the train yard. Had he passed them at Daddy Zee’s once, before Shiro worked there? Had he seen them coming or going from the warehouse? What about when he was first starting out, in the scrap shop? His stomach twists—how had he not considered this before? _It was a trap. Of course it was._

Two weeks ago he was dead set against ever sharing a meal with his crew, and now they’re—what are they even _doing_? “What are we supposed to do?” he asks, half hypothetically, anger surging into his voice. “Why are you—let’s just give them the fucking money!”

Pidge turns to him, an eyebrow quirked, infuriatingly mild in her response. “Are you naive enough that you think Haggar won’t find a way to keep you?”

Keith tries to swallow and can’t. There’s a lump in his throat. “So what, we don’t hand over the cash? We piss off the most powerful crime boss in the city? In the country?”

“What’s your alternative?” she asks flatly. Keith has no answer. “Besides,” says Pidge, raising another bite of pancake to her mouth. “I don’t want to piss her off. I want to take her down.”

This isn’t the first time he’s seen this side of Pidge, Keith remembers. In the car, a few days ago, she’d talked about overthrowing Haggar like—like it was her life’s dream. _Do you know how many people want to take Haggar down?_

It came up in the midst of another conversation, which would explain why Pidge has begun staring at Shiro.

Realizing he’s got two pairs of expectant eyes on him, Shiro blinks, and lowers the coffee cup from his lips. “What?” Pidge gives Keith a sideways look. “Wait, what?” says Shiro again, his voice cracking.

“So,” says Pidge slowly. “You _don’t_ have a devious coup planned to out Haggar?”

“Excuse me?”

Keith has to stifle a laugh at Pidge’s plummeting expression, though it’s not funny. Just, you get the feeling she isn’t used to having her theories disproven. “You’re not working for a rival family? You’re not even a spy?”

Shiro squints at her, then at Keith, then back at her. “Where are you getting this?”

Pidge turns to Keith, her face desolate. “I think he might just be super friendly.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“You thought I was staging a coup?” says Shiro, a little hurt.

“So we don’t have a plan,” Pidge realizes. “We don’t have any resources. We just have… us three, and Lance.”

“And a lot of cash,” Keith reminds her. A scenario pops into his head, where they take the money and run. But how many times has he considered that before and crushed the idea? He knew then that Haggar would find him eventually. Now the pain in his arm serves as a grim, present reminder of her determination, of what she’d do to keep him under her thumb.

“Are you sure it’s just us?” Shiro asks quietly. Keith narrows his eyes—Shiro just admitted he’s never considered mutiny.

Pidge lifts her head. “I… I mean, I don’t really know anyone else in the organization. They always kept us separate. I guess now I know why.”

Keith sets his sights on Shiro. “Since when are you one of us? Do you even have a debt with them?” Shiro sits back at the confrontation in his tone. It’s been a while since Keith was outright hostile toward him.

“They tried to screw me over, too. What if that bullet had hit me instead?” He shrugs. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m with you guys now.”

Pidge adjusts her glasses nervously. “What about you, Keith?”

“I…”

They’re both staring at him, waiting for an answer, but he didn’t hear a question.

He recalls the bullet hole in his jacket. How angry that makes him. How he’s owed.

“I don’t know what other choice I have.”

A profound silence circles the table as it settles in that the three of them have tacitly agreed to something, something _big_ , something that could take their lives if they’re not careful.

Pidge sighs. “Should we call Lance?”

 

 

 

 

 

Later that day, in a diner on the opposite side of town, Allura plucks at the faded, stringy vinyl upholstery of the booth where she’s sitting alone, waiting for her tea to cool. They didn’t have the English breakfast she wanted, only chamomile and that vile Lipton stuff. She’d elected to bear the chamomile and choose somewhere nicer for the next rendezvous.

She’d told herself she wouldn’t comment on Takashi’s poor taste in selecting this place, but now he’s ten minutes late, too. So she’ll have to comment on something.

When he shows up, he’s breathless, like he rushed to get here. “Hi. I’m so sorry.” He extends his hand to her over the table. “I’m Takashi.”

She shakes, forcing a big smile, with a hint of nervousness. That’s for the waitress who’s had her eye on Takashi since he walked in. “Allura. It’s delightful to finally meet you.” She adds, quieter, “This date is off to an imperfect start.”

He settles into the booth across from her. “I know—I got caught up in something. It’s been an active couple of days.” Allura brightens. He raises his voice enough for the diner’s other patrons to overhear him say, “You know, you look even better than in your picture? I thought that never happens with these apps.”

She feigns a shy smile, and talks through her teeth. “What’s happening?” The last time they met, a month ago, all he’d had to offer was that he might be pulled for a bank job soon.

Everyone makes undercover work out to be exceptionally glamorous, but Allura would protest: her partner has had nothing to report for the last year beyond making fries and, less frequently, connections.

Police work is more drudgery than danger, she’s found. But there’s a sort of hysterical energy in Takashi’s eyes today that suggests the tide has turned.

“I don’t know where to start,” he says, with a slight shake of his head.

“Did you get to participate in one of their public stunts?”

“I did.”

Allura exhales. “So you can testify.” They could stop now, if they wanted. Takashi could return to his life. They could be partners again, properly.

Only he’s shaking his head. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Of course it’s complicated, but—” She leans forward slightly and lowers her voice in kind. “Do you have enough to convict her?”

Takashi shuts his eyes for a second. “Yes.”

“Then what else—”

“They’re kids. The people she’s using, she’s got these kids in this pact—I mean, they’re not all kids, one of them is—older—but there’s a girl, she’s sixteen—”

“All the more reason to take her down now!”

He’s shaking his head again, and she could shake him. “There’s more going on, I can find out more.”

“What more can there be? She’s the head of the snake.”

“And if I don’t see this through, it could sprout another.” He sees her frowning, and pushes: “They’re finally starting to trust me. Just give me more time, Allura. I’ll get what we need to put them all away, for good.”

She sits stiffly, purses her lips, fiddles with her tea. “Coran’s going to hear all of this, you know. I have a recorder.”

“Coran, _give me more time_.”

“It won’t be up to me. They could pull you whenever they want,” she says. “Are you ready for that? To come back to your life?”

“Honestly? No, I’m not. But it’s because I’m not finished.”

Allura lets her shoulders droop. “I’ll see what I can do.” And she starts to get up—everyone has seen how her mood soured.

“Thank you,” he says, quietly, and then louder, “Don’t leave—I didn’t mean it!”

She gathers her bag and her coat, mouth puckering in distress that’s not entirely performed. “You’re welcome. You have a month.”

And then she storms out of the diner, head held high.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took forever, but at least there's drama?


	5. want

When they tell Lance the plan, his eyes go buggy, and he says nothing for a second that stretches into a moment that ekes into an awkward minute. 

Pidge turns to Shiro and murmurs, “Did we break him?”

“I… don’t really know yet?”

“You people,” says Lance suddenly, sitting forward. “You invited me over for pizza! And now you—and there’s not even pizza!”

Shiro puts up his hands defensively. “The pizza is on the way.”

“Do I have to agree to this crazy stunt to eat it? Because I’ll go get my own fricking pizza—”

“It’s not a stunt,” Pidge insists. “It’s a calculated campaign to undermine Haggar’s authority and slowly take over the organization.”

“Oh, so it’s not just stupid, it’s boring too!”

Pidge folds her arms across her chest. She looks even younger when she pouts. “What’s your problem? Why wouldn’t you—it’s not _stupid_ , Lance, it’s—smart! The opposite of stupid!”

Keith watches their back-and-forth with mild interest; it’s what he can muster. He and Shiro lock eyes where they’re sitting across from one another at the kitchen table, and the corners of Shiro’s lips turn up. 

“Is it?” Lance is saying. “‘Cause like—and just, you know, bear with me for a second on this one—did you think about how you’re not the first people who didn’t like Haggar? Did you think about how the Galra have been getting stronger for decades _anyway_? They get one whiff of this and that’s it. For all of us.”

Pidge’s annoyance fades into seriousness. “You don’t think it’s worth trying? When she’s exploiting us—”

“We’re _criminals_!” Lance twists a hand through his hair. He has the same hysterical edge in his voice he had when they were running from gunfire just a few days ago. “We—exploitation is what we do. There’s no endgame for us in this ‘good guys’ crap, Pidge.”

“We _are_ the good guys,” Pidge says. Shiro has stopped smiling. The air around the argument grows heavy. Even Keith finds himself a little uncomfortable with the energy.

“We’re not! ” 

“They made us do those things. It’s not _right_.”

“Yeah, was it right when Hunk shot that guy?”

Pidge’s mouth hangs open. Keith can see her struggling for words, for an explanation or an excuse.

Lance bows his head. “This is so stupid. We’re gonna get our brains blown out if we do this.”

Pidge grips the edge of the table and pleads. “We’re supposed to be a team.”

“I can’t believe _you_ got on board with this.”

Keith starts when he realizes that Lance is talking to him. 

“You of all people should see how dumb this is,” Lance continues. “You like—you won’t even tell us how old you are and you wanna team up against Haggar? Seriously?”

“Keith understands why we have to do it,” Pidge snaps. 

“Okay, let’s find a solution,” Shiro announces hastily, cutting the conversation off before it can escalate further. “Let’s figure out what all of us want to happen, and then strategize a way to get there that we can agree on. How does that sound?”

“Fair enough,” Lance mutters, begrudgingly. Pidge shrugs and tosses her head.

Shiro takes that for a temporary truce. “Do we all agree that something needs to change?”

Pidge nods aggressively. Lance hesitates, and glances at Keith, and pretty soon everyone else is looking at Keith too. 

_Since when does everyone give a fuck what I think?_ Maybe they always did and he never noticed before. He shuts his eyes. “I… I want to get out.”

“I’d say that means you don’t like how things are,” Shiro says. Keith opens his eyes, and meets Shiro’s again.

“Yeah.”

Pidge sounds pleased: “That’s a vote for change!”

“I never said I _liked_ the situation,” Lance grunts. “I just—I don’t have any illusions about us being able to change it. Sorry.”

There’s something final about that apology that makes Pidge shrink in her seat. She looks at Shiro, and then at Keith, pleading. She’s smart enough to know Lance won’t listen to her past this point, Keith guesses, but it’s not like he’s got a solution for her. He’s already contributed more to this conversation than he did for—any of their previous ones. What’s he supposed to do, pull a motivational speech out of his ass? He can feel himself glaring.

A sigh floats across the table: Shiro. “I don’t know what happened to your friend. The guy who was your fourth before me.” His gaze circles the table; it must be evident no one feels like sharing. “But I’m guessing it wasn’t great, and he was young, like you three, and didn’t deserve to be a part of it. Like you three. And—I don’t know what the Galra have done with him, but I know there’s no getting him out if we don’t try.”

Lance is Keith’s opposite, a real heart-on-the-sleeve type. Keith has always found that annoying, because sometimes people don’t wanna fucking _know_ what you’re thinking, but it’s acceptable in this moment because he can see Shiro’s rationale working on Lance in real time. He watches the lines around Lance’s mouth going slack, watches his eyes widen. Lance doesn’t care about his own future much, Keith realizes. He’s not like Keith and Pidge, pursing grudges and escapes. The thing that gets to Lance is guilt. Or, whatever made him feel guilty in the first place. Empathy. 

When Lance speaks again, after a long silence, his voice is rough. “What’s our plan, then? What’s the ace-in-the-hole? How are we—what’s going to make us special?”

Pidge takes a deep breath and lifts her chin. “You know, I don’t know yet. But we’re going to figure it out.” 

 

 

 

 

Keith has been at Shiro’s for thirty-six hours—forty-two if you count what he doesn’t remember—before he lays eyes on the cat.

It’s not until he sees Shiro emptying a tin can into a bowl at lunch time that he even remembers there’s supposed to be a cat. “Is that for Tesla?” Shiro nods. “He’s been hiding out this whole time?” Shiro nods again. 

“He doesn’t like the commotion.”

“That makes two of us,” Keith mutters, curling up on the couch.

“I knew there was something I liked about you.”

Shiro departs for a jog a few minutes later. Keith doesn’t leave the couch; he peeks over the cushions at the bowl on the counter and waits for Tesla to appear, thinking he can’t miss it. 

But ten minutes go by, and then fifteen, and Keith’s limited patience runs dry. He crawls over to Shiro’s bookshelf and starts pawing through the DVD collection.

By the time he hears the sound of glass scraping against faux granite, it’s too late. The bowl is empty, the cat is nowhere to be seen, and Shiro doesn’t have any good DVDs.

Keith hasn’t known many cats in his life, so he doesn’t know there’s no finding Tesla when Tesla doesn’t want to be found. He has to wait for the cat to come to him, and when he asks, Shiro tells him as much.

“You can’t rush him. He’ll introduce himself when he’s ready.”

“I thought I was standoffish,” Keith grunts, getting a laugh out of Shiro. He’s good at that—getting laughs out of Shiro—though every chuckle seems hard won, like Shiro laughs in spite of something. 

And Shiro is right. Tesla introduces himself when he’s ready, and he’s ready at six o’clock in the morning, making his entrance on Keith’s sleeping head.

Keith sneezes himself awake, inhales fur, and makes a strangled noise—a dealbreaker for Tesla. The cat leaps off his face and slinks down the bed, giving Keith a nasty look over his shoulder. He’s a big black cat with yellow-green eyes, like a miniature panther. 

“Your cat tried to suffocate me,” Keith tells Shiro as he shuffles into the kitchen that morning. 

Shiro is throwing a bunch of green shit into a blender. He smiles. “Oh, yeah. He does that.”

“You’re pretty chill for someone with a murder pet.”

“He gets jealous.”

“Jealous of what?”

Shiro blinks rapidly, then shrugs. “He’s not very vocal about his logic. Being a cat, and all.”

The word _jealous_ echoes in Keith’s head for the rest of the day. He doesn’t see Tesla again for a while.

Aside from the discomfort of an unfamiliar place, and the continuing ache in his arm, and the looming coup-related dread, Keith’s biggest issue with his quarantine is boredom. There’s just—nothing to do here except play video games and wait for Shiro to come home from wherever Shiro goes. The gym, errands, the grocery store. He keeps finding excuses to leave Keith alone. Which wouldn’t bother Keith, if he weren’t so fucking _bored_.

He gets it. When they’re in the same room together, the tension is palpable, the innuendo winds its way between every word they say to each other. And Shiro is the one who can get out, who has somewhere to go, who doesn’t get dizzy after standing for more than a minute or two. So he’s saving both of them from the unbearable awkwardness, in a sense.

But Keith isn’t sure he wants to be saved. A voice in him screams, _Can we get this over with?_ Even though he doesn’t know what _this_ is. Or he wants to pretend he doesn’t know, because he’s never considered rejection and he’d rather not start now. You can’t get turned down if you don’t ask anyone for anything, ever, and for nearly twenty years that life philosophy has done him serviceably.

On the other hand, if there’s a band-aid to be ripped off, he’d rather just do it and live with the consequences, as opposed to hoping it’ll peel away in its own in time. He’s not patient enough to make peace with not knowing. 

So he sits caught between impulses that expand and contract, waiting for Shiro to get home. In one moment he’ll swear to himself, _I won’t wait another second_ , and plans moves he might make. The second hand ticks twice on the clock above Shiro’s stove and Keith’s determination implodes into complacency. _There’s no point_ , he’ll think. _It’s not worth it._

Indecision doesn’t suit him. It’s tight around his neck, and it itches.

Keith has never thought of himself as predictable, but this is something else. He doesn’t have an inkling of what he’s going to do—inevitably it’ll be whatever takes over him in the moment. He probably won’t realize he’s made a decision until it’s too late. So that’s another damn thing for him to worry about.

Day three at Shiro’s: he passes the afternoon on the couch, beside the rumpled pile of bedsheets leftover from Shiro bunking in the living room. _Ancient Aliens_ is on the television and has been for hours, Keith’s attention flickering in and out as he broods and plans and scraps the plans and starts the cycle over again. 

After the third of appearance of a man described only as a “theorist,” Keith gets up and wanders around the apartment, poking through Shiro’s stuff. His crappy DVD collection, his better video game collection, his small assortment of athletic trophies. The art on the walls, where it exists, is hotel-room generic. Posters of Paris, that kind of shit. The bedroom closet lacks color: it’s wall-to-wall black and navy suits, white button-downs, worn dress shoes. 

A small cardboard box on the closet floor makes Keith raise an eyebrow. He pops it open, sees a pair of handcuffs, and slams the box top down again. That is—more than Keith was ready to learn about Shiro. (Not that he doesn’t take a second, thoughtful peek. He’s got a healthy—curiosity, about these things.)

A couple of hours have passed since Shiro left for the gym. The sun is going down,  and then it’s down, then it’s dark for a while. Still, Shiro doesn’t show up.

Keith turns off the television and stares at the door. He checks the time. Half past eleven.

Annoyance stirs in Keith. He gets up and hobbles into the bathroom to take  a shower. When he gets out, he wanders into the main room in a towel, taunting Shiro to come home and stumble upon him in near-nakedness. He waits for the sound of the key in the door.

And there’s nothing. So Keith glares, returns to the bedroom, throws on the oversized clothes he’s been sleeping in, and goes to bed. His hair leaves a damp spot on the pillow, the uncomfortable sensation making him toss and turn for a while before he starts to drift off.

_Click. Scrape._

Keith bolts up in bed.

“Where were you?”

Shiro stands in the foyer, keys and mail in hand, circles under his eyes. “You’re still up.”

“I wasn’t. Now I am.”

Shiro sighs, deeply, and Keith feels—guilt, maybe? For being so annoyed. “I was getting the money back to the Galra.”

“Oh.” They—Lance and Pidge and Keith and Shiro—had agreed keeping the money would cast them in a suspicious light, and they wanted to look compliant and trustworthy in the Galra’s eyes, if at all possible. “Did they…”

“I played it like we had no idea it was an inside job, and it took us a while to return the money because we were spooked. And as far as I could tell, they bought it.” Shiro tosses him an expectant look, like he’s saying, _See? Just like we planned_. 

So there’s nothing wrong with the _idea_ of planning. It works, sometimes. Keith bites his lip. “What are you gonna do now?”

“Uh,” says Shiro, with a shrug. “I don’t know. Whatever Pidge suggests, I would think—”

“I meant tonight.”

“Oh—oh.” He hangs up his keys, slips out of his jacket. “It’s late.”

“You want to watch something?”

“You’re not going back to bed?”

“I’m not tired.”

Maybe there’s an edge in Keith’s voice, because Shiro hesitates before he says, “Yeah, sure. We can watch something.”

Keith slinks over to the couch and sits down without breaking their eye contact. Shiro’s mouth twists playfully.

“Did you pick that up from Tesla?”

“Pick what up?”

“Never mind.” Shiro joins him, leaving a healthy space between them on what’s not an especially wide sofa. Keith squirms in his seat. It’s organic that the space should shrink, isn’t it? Each of them moves a little bit, every so often, and then they’re sitting knee-to-knee.

Or Keith could just close the distance now. Where does he get off being subtle, anyway? He barely even knows what that means.

Thus when Shiro joins Keith, leaving a healthy space between them, Keith fidgets sideways until that space is a sickening sliver of air separating their thighs.

If Shiro notices, he doesn’t say anything. His teeth are on his lip. “What are we watching?”

“Whatever.”

“You suggested that we watch something. You didn’t have anything in mind?”

Keith had been staring at the sliver, but he looks up to meet Shiro’s eye when he says, “No. I didn’t.”

“Oh… ‘kay,” says Shiro. “Movie or TV? Any genres you’re not feeling right now?”

“No.”

“So if I put on the _Scandal_ episode I have on my DVR, you’ll be fine?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” says Shiro, with a shrug. “Then we’re watching _Scandal_.”

Keith doesn’t mention that he has no idea what _Scandal_ is. The recap at the beginning of the episode alone runs three minutes, and he realizes following the story will be impossible. Not that he intended to try and follow it, but here’s the perfect excuse. As far as he can tell, it’s about a woman who runs around doing serious shit and talking on her cellphone while wearing nice coats. Shiro seems riveted.

“You really like this?” Keith asks him, after a long sequence of the coat woman drinking white wine. 

“If you watched from the first episode—”

“No, I just mean.” Keith shakes his head. “You’re… an ex-marine.”

“So I’m only supposed to watch _NCIS_?”

“No,” says Keith, sinking into the couch. “I don’t know.”

There’s a long pause before Shiro says, “I understand what you’re saying. But, people can be more than one thing. If we weren’t, we’d be…”

“Boring.”

“Yes.”

“You’re definitely not boring,” Keith mutters. When Shiro doesn’t reply, he glances sideways, at the peculiar expression on Shiro’s face.

“Thanks.”

It’s a quiet nicety, because Shiro knows he has to say something, that he can’t just let that hang in the air between them. Keith struck a chord, he must have, but he can’t tell what chord that was, only see it echo across Shiro’s face. 

“I think I’ll finish the rest of the episode tomorrow,” Shiro says, louder, standing suddenly. “I’m exhausted. We should both get some sleep.” The gap he leaves on the sofa sucks at Keith like a vacuum.

“Sure. Yeah.”

“Good night.”

“Yeah.” Shiro starts for the bathroom, but stalls at Keith’s voice: “Can I get out of the apartment tomorrow?” Shiro frowns. “I’m going stir-crazy here. Drive me somewhere, or something. If you can.”

 Shiro’s frown smooths out; the apple of his throat bobs. “Of course. We’ll figure it out in the morning. It’ll be great.” He forces a smile. Keith returns the gesture, and his face feels weird afterward, like he pulled a muscle. The feeling lingers even as he crawls back into Shiro’s bed and drifts off to sleep, touching his fingers to his lips.

 

 

 

 

The next morning, there’s a backpack and a duffel bag sitting by the door. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night,” Shiro tells him. “And I thought we could make a weekend out of it. There’s this cabin, out in the mountains…”

Keith’s first thought is, _holy shit, he’s taking me to a love nest._

Then: “I invited Pidge and Lance along.” 

_A shitty, shitty love nest._

“I thought it could be a good opportunity for the four of us to plan without the Galra noticing we’re spending time together.”

Keith has to admit, it’s a good idea. No doubt the Galra have eyes on them enough of the time that they’d notice a meeting—if they get out of town, they can lose their tails, and ensure they’re not watched. But Keith can’t pretend he wouldn’t have been excited to spend a couple of days alone with Shiro in a romantic mountain cabin. Or whatever. 

So they load the bags into Shiro’s car and drive off. They’ve been in the car for fifteen minutes before Keith realizes they’re not heading toward the mountains.

“Where the hell are you taking me?”

Keith grabs for the steering wheel, but Shiro pushes him off. “Hey! Relax! We’re going to your dad’s!”

Keith freezes. “My…”

“You deserve to wear your own clothes.” Keith melts back into the seat. His dad will be home.

“What if he can tell?”

“Tell what?”

“That I got shot.”

Shiro smiles weakly. “You’ve been hiding your job from him for… how long? You’ll be fine. Show him you’re okay.”

Keith swallows hard. He doesn’t know that he _is_ okay, but they’re already at the apartment. His insides shift threateningly. The walk up to the front of the building seems miles long. There’s a soft metal crinkle, and he looks over to find Shiro offering him his keys. “You left your keys in your jacket pocket.”

So Keith does it. Gets out of the car, moves up the walk and inside, fits his key in the door. 

Inside, his father is asleep on the couch like he often is. Keith’s never felt relief at the line of drool coming from his mouth and the putter of his snore—usually it’s bad, because he’s sick, he’s tired. Today, though, seeing his father napping at eleven in the morning draws a sigh from him. This is easier, he thinks. He can leave a note.

He shoves half his clothes into a backpack and the rest into an old shopping bag, because he doesn’t have a suitcase. He scrawls on the greasy old notepad in the kitchen, _I came by and you were asleep. Going on a trip, back in a few days. - K._

 When it’s done, Keith steps back and stares at the paper. It doesn’t feel sufficient. He could add: _by the way, I’ve changed since the last time you saw me. Something happened and I changed_. But he doesn’t. They’re men of few words, and even fewer between each other. 

When he returns to the car, Shiro gives him a curious look.

“He was asleep. Kind of a bust.”

Shiro says, “Ah,” and nods. The keys are in the ignition, but he doesn’t start the car, not right away. “How are you?”

Keith squirms in his seat. “Fine.” He’s not sure he likes this approach from Shiro, almost—paternalistic? Like getting sent to the nurse in grade school after a fight. _Can you tell me who hit you? Did you hit back? It’s okay, you can tell me._

Shiro nods again, almost acknowledging Keith’s silent expression of discomfort. He turns the key in the ignition. 

Keith exhales. “Did I pass?”

“Yeah, you passed.”

“Cool.”

They don’t talk much for the rest of the ride. Keith doesn’t mind that. The feeling of being driven somewhere makes him sleepy, and he dozes off with the hint of a smile on his face, not waking until they’ve nearly arrived.

 

 

 

 

The cabin, which might’ve been plucked from a magazine about Appalachian living, lies at the end of a long road—one that begins paved, then turns to gravel, then to dirt. The distance between mailboxes expands as the car climbs the mountain, the houses shrinking away from the road. By the time they reach the cabin, it’s been twenty minutes since they saw another building.

Shiro parks out front. “What is this place?" Keith asks. There are no other cars, not yet; they must’ve beaten Pidge and Lance. 

“It’s been in my family for years. Doesn’t get a lot of use.”

Keith pulls a face. He hasn’t thought much about Shiro’s family, but he didn’t imagine them as second-home-owner types. 

He tries to carry his own bag up the front steps, but Shiro wrestles it from his hands. “No carrying.”

“I can get it with my other arm.”

“Sorry, doctor’s orders.”

“All right, Dad.”

Ah, yes. Nothing like a misplaced joke to rain down discomfort on an already fragile dynamic.

Shiro clears his throat and turns his back to Keith, occupying himself with unlocking the cabin. Keith throws back his head and mouths, _shit_. Nothing like accusing the person you want to fuck of infantilizing you!

The interior of the cabin is dark, and when they flick the lights on you can hear a generator hum to life somewhere outside. Shiro busies himself pulling dust covers off of the furniture. “Bedrooms are down that hall, if you want to go pick one out.”

His stomach’s still churning from the _dad_ comment, so Keith seizes the opportunity to be somewhere Shiro isn’t, and takes off down the hall.

For a family cabin, there’s very little that feels familial about this place. No photographs of people, no kitschy sign reading _THE SHIROGANES_. The decor is all woodsy and shit, like he supposes a vacation home should be—it’s not like he’s been to many. Maybe they planned to rent it out or something.

Keith meanders through three bedrooms distinguished only by their number of windows. He selects the one with the fewest and flops back onto the bed, kneading his forehead. What’s he supposed to be feeling right now? Anxious, excited, wary? And what’s he supposed to be feeling it about—the criminal enterprise that keeps dragging him back into its clutches, or Shiro? Whenever he thinks of one, he gets distracted by the other.

Okay, that’s not true. Not much can distract him from Shiro.

Shiro is just nice, and stupid, and hot, he tells himself. It’s not even that big of a fucking deal that Keith is into him—it’s not that big of a deal whether or not he returns the sentiment. It’s not going to happen, it shouldn’t happen, it might not even be that great if it did happen.

That’s hard to imagine. That it wouldn’t be great. The sex.

Keith rolls onto his stomach and groans into the mattress. Lance and Pidge need to hurry up. He’s desperate for a buffer, anything to keep him from doing something he can’t take back. 

There’s a knock at the bedroom’s open door. Keith rolls over and—off the bed, onto the floor.

“Shit!”

“Are you okay?” Shiro is standing over him, offering a hand that Keith pushes away.

“I’m—fine.”

“I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“You didn’t.”

Shiro blinks, and Keith scrambles to his feet, using the bed to pull himself up. His face is hot. So fucking smooth.

“I got a text from Pidge,” Shiro begins, taking a step back so he stands at the threshold to Keith’s room, rather than inside it.

“When are they getting here?”

“Yeah. That.” Keith freezes at Shiro’s sigh. “Apparently her mother caught her leaving.”

“Shit.”

“It sounds like she managed to cover up what she was doing, but she isn’t getting out of there tonight, and she was Lance’s ride.”

Fuck. _Shit._ “So what do we do?”

Shiro shrugs, heaves another sigh. “What can we do? We wait.”

It takes Keith a moment to swallow that reality. They’re both thinking the same thing, probably: that they’ve got a hell of a lot riding on whether or not a sixteen-year-old can sneak out of her parents’ house.

Shiro taps his knuckles on the doorframe. “I’ll go make us something to eat.”

“Okay.”

As soon as he’s gone, Keith lays back on the bed again. So much for his goddamn buffer.

 

 

 

 

They eat canned soup together, hunched over the small table in the kitchen. Tomato for Keith, vegetable for Shiro.

“I’m sorry about this,” says Shiro. Keith can think of a dozen things he might be apologizing for, and he doesn’t want to get into any of it, so he shakes his head.

“Whatever.”

“So… we don’t have a television.” Shiro gathers up their dirty dishes and removes them to the sink. “There are some old books lying around, I think? And Scrabble. I don’t know how you feel about Scrabble.”

_Bad,_ Keith thinks. _I feel bad about it_. “Scrabble’s fine.”

Shiro stares at him for a long moment, hands in his pockets. Then he nods. “Great. I’ll go set it up.”

Before they begin, Shiro starts a fire for them in the large stone hearth that dominates the living room. Keith has to admit that the heat is nice, though the addition of a pleasantly crackling fire to this already cursed evening makes him gag.

Shiro takes a long time on his turns. TRIES. AGAPE. SEAS. GILL.

Keith goes for the low-hanging fruit on the high-value spaces. PINT. BASH. HAD. SEXY,

“S-E-X-Y. Triple letter, triple word. Sixty-six points.” Keith notes his achievement on the scorecard, smiling a little. He now has a hearty lead.

Shiro sits back, lips parted, not sure how he came to be almost a hundred points behind. 

While he’s deliberating, Keith gets up and wanders over to the liquor cabinet. Or, he guesses it’s the liquor cabinet, because it has that look about it.

Turns out he’s right.

“You want some scotch?”

Shiro glances up—he hadn’t noticed Keith rooting around for a drink. “Uh. No. Are you sure…”

“I’m just having one,” says Keith, already pouring. 

When he returns to their game, Shiro has played, adding an -ON to SEAS for SEASON. The move nets him only eight points. 

Keith takes a long swig of the scotch. It burns pleasantly down his throat. He arranges his next word in a second—he’s been saving this one.

S-U-C-K. SUCK.

Shiro stares at the board. Keith feels himself smiling into his drink, glowing with the dilemma indicated by the thin line of Shiro’s mouth.

“How many points?” Shiro asks.

“Sixteen.”

“You’re holding on to that lead.”

“That’s the idea.”

Shiro’s next word is FACT, played off the C in SUCK. Fifteen points—not bad, but not enough to threaten Keith.

He’s nearly drained the scotch and begins feeling its effects. Or he tells himself it’s the drink making him bold, that perhaps he wouldn’t do this normally. That may or may not be true. Perhaps he was looking for an excuse.

D-I-C-K. DICK.

It runs right beneath Shiro’s previous word, off of SUCK, forming an assortment of phrases—SUCK FACT DICK. FACT DICK SUCK. SUCK DICK FACT.

Shiro rubs the back of his neck. “AC is an abbreviation. You can’t play abbreviations.”

“I guess you’re right.” Keith wipes away the D, I, and C tiles. He doesn’t care that Shiro won’t let him play the word. His opponent’s obvious discomfort is reward enough.

His alternative play spells out BONE. Shiro sighs loudly when he lays it out. Fourteen points.

Shiro’s next turn takes longer than usual, and he mutters something about vowels while tugging at the collar of his shirt. Keith finishes his scotch, sinking back in the couch, smiling at Shiro over the rim of his glass.

Off the S in BASH, Shiro spells W-A-I-T-S. WAITS. He gets a double word score, for twenty-four points. It’s pretty good. _Waits_.

Annoyance prickles in Keith. He sits forward and quickly plays off the W. 

W-E-T. WET.

“You know,” Shiro announces, “I don’t think it’s possible for me to catch up at this point. Why don’t we call it a game? You won, clearly.”

“You don’t want to keep playing?” Keith’s revving his engines—he’s ready for a fight. “But I’ve got more words to show you.”

“Keith.”

“There are some good ones. You’re missing out.”

“Maybe we should talk about this.”

“Talk about this?” _This. This_. Keith stirs with indignation. “What’s this? What are we supposed to be talking about?”

Shiro runs a hand down his face, the firelight casting odd shadows across his skin.

There’s nowhere for him to run, now. He brought this on himself—got trapped out here with Keith, no one but God to save him, and Keith has a feeling God isn’t coming. 

As if daring fate to strike him down, Keith stands suddenly, and steps around the table. Shiro watches him approach through parted fingers.

“So? What are we talking about?”

“Don’t do this.”

“You say that like I’m going to hurt you.”

A shake of Shiro’s head. He struggles to answer. “You don’t know what you’re going to do.”

Keith narrows his eyes. He’s standing over Shiro, now, and reaches out to touch his shoulder, testing to see if he’ll be rebuked. Shiro’s hand comes up and wraps around his fingers—he doesn’t know what to call that.

“This isn’t going to happen,” says Shiro, quietly, bowing his head.

“Why not?”

“For more reasons than I have time to explain.”

An idea percolating, Keith sinks to the floor in front of Shiro, hanging off one of his knees. “Is one of them that you don’t want it?”

He’s forced Shiro’s eye, this way. Forced him to look Keith in the eye while he prattles about inexplicable whys and all the boring, shitty reasons why they shouldn’t. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” Keith slides his hand up Shiro’s knee, along his thigh, toward his hips. 

“You don’t know what you’re doing to me,” Shiro says, his voice low, ragged, pupils blasted into black.

“Then show me.”

 It startles Keith, actually—how suddenly Shiro is pulling him close, a hand cradling his neck, a mouth on his mouth—and then everything and anything else he might’ve felt dissolves into want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent so long figuring out the exact order of moves Keith would need to seduce Shiro through Scrabble. Thanks.
> 
> I haven't been updating a lot for a lot of reasons, but honestly I'm doing a lot better now and have free time to do stuff like commissions and work on fic for myself.


	6. anger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is 60% smut and 40% drama. enjoy it, i hope?

 

 

It is as good as Keith hoped it would be. Better, maybe.

He knows that high school make-outs and backseat hand jobs don’t make him an expert, but they don’t make him a novice, either. And he knows what he wants: this knowing fills him with the confidence, maybe unearned, to forget the meaning of timidity and kiss Shiro back. Shiro might be older, but he’s got a layer of deference around him at all times that suggests he’s a stranger to what’s happening between them right now—this instantaneous, messy, hot thing they’re sharing. Has Shiro ever let himself get this messy before? Has anyone ever pushed him to the point where he can’t help himself, before tonight?

Perhaps it’s as novel and exciting for Shiro as it is for Keith. Perhaps that’s why half their kisses miss by an inch, why the hands tugging on Keith’s waist are shaking slightly, why the urgency has them grinding against each other like sixteen-year-olds after junior prom.

Keith has made his home in Shiro’s lap, straddling his hips. He likes the access this gives him to Shiro’s neck, to the smooth line from jaw to shoulder, which he touches with vampiric delight before leaning in and sucking, hard.

Shiro doesn’t know what to do with him, that’s obvious. He just keeps grabbing at Keith’s hips and running his hands up and down Keith’s back, murmuring something that might be, _please, no hickey. Seriously_.

Keith ignores the plea for as long as he feels like giving a hickey, which is a couple of minutes. Then he returns to Shiro’s mouth. To Shiro’s tongue. To Shiro’s lips, and the traces of salt from their stupid shitty dinner, the low point of what Keith was sure would be a stupid shitty night.

Now it’s just a stupid night, he figures. But it’s less shitty. That’s got to count for something.

Goes without saying that Keith is hard by now, and a quick glance down shows that Shiro is, too. Keith wants to say something along the lines of, _hey, all that fucking with my head and I still made your dick hard in two minutes flat_.

But that’s more words than he has patience for, right now.

“Shirt,” he hisses, and goes for the hem of Shiro’s tee.

Shiro doesn’t quite respond. His eyes have glazed over and he moves just enough to let Keith drag the shirt over his head. He fixates on Keith’s hair—he keeps reaching out to brush it from Keith’s eyes, and then again when it inevitably falls back out of place.

Without the shirt, Shiro is a goddamn spectacle. Keith knew he would be, he _knew_. Only now that he’s faced with the real thing does he realize how often and clearly he’s imagined Shiro shirtless—the differences startle him, and for a moment he sits back, forgetting their kisses.

Shiro has scars. Big ones. Keith had noticed the prominent one across Shiro’s nose, of course, he’d just never considered that there might be more elsewhere. A couple on his stomach look like bullet wounds. There’s a larger, more jagged mark across one of his pectorals. Combined with the scarring on his bad arm, the one that Keith noticed didn’t move quite right weeks ago, it’s—a lot to take in. Doesn’t seem fair, having to go through whatever Shiro went through, and being so young. Like they stole something from him.

Shiro’s hand slides up Keith’s neck, cupping his cheek. Shiro breaks his stare with a kiss—a deep, careful embrace, different from their earlier, hurried make out. It feels good, arresting. Keith’s eyes fall closed. He’s putty in Shiro’s arms, which is not at all how he’d imagined this encounter going.

Shiro shifts out of their kiss, letting Keith’s head drop against his shoulder while his hands move over Keith’s back, then down further. His thumbs hook into the waist of Keith’s jeans. Keith can feel Shiro’s breath hot on the crook of his neck when Shiro speaks.

“What do you want?”

Holy shit, is he a fucking phone sex operator? “Mmmfffn,” says Keith. It’s the best he can do. He tries to remember words. Does he know any words?

Shiro puts his mouth against the skin beneath Keith’s ear, and Keith lets out a small, stuttering moan.

Fuck. Wasn’t he supposed to be in control of this encounter? Who seduced who, here?

“Keith.” Shiro repeats his question. “What do you want?”

“I thought it was kind of fucking obvious!”

“I don’t want to push you—”

Shiro chokes on a gasp, because Keith has reached between them and grabbed Shiro’s cock through the fabric of his pants. “Push me all you want,” Keith murmurs. He starts undoing the button and fly of Shiro’s jeans. Shiro’s hands tighten around his ass in response. He figures that means he’s doing something right.

Shiro is so hard that even freeing his cock from the confines of his jeans and boxers stimulates him to the point of gasping. He is—big, and pink, and stiff, dampened with precum at the tip—and there is a split second where Keith feels himself blushing at how well he can see everything. This isn’t the backseat of a car parked in the woods.

He slides off Shiro’s lap to kneel on the floor between his legs. Shiro pants, his lips swollen and bruised from kissing, the hickey on his neck rosy-fresh. When he realizes what Keith is preparing to do, he runs a hand down his face, and mutters something into his palm.

“What’d you say?” Keith simpers, leaning toward Shiro’s dick with parted lips.

“You’re—something else, you know that?”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I—yeah. It’s a good thing.”

Smiling, Keith folds his lips around the tip of Shiro’s cock. Shiro inhales sharply, trying to keep himself from making another, more primal noise. Keith’s experience of blow jobs comes entirely from watching pornography. Shiro keeps shielding his face with his hands and swallowing his best noises and it’s annoying—when Keith imagined this he got Shiro to lose himself in ecstasy, or whatever. Instead, as Keith slides his tongue along the side of Shiro’s cock, Shiro contains himself with measured breathing, a bowed head, and his palm over his mouth. His whole body is tense around Keith. He doesn’t even look like he’s having _fun_.

Keith stops what he’s doing to reach up and drag Shiro’s arm away from his face. “Can you relax?”

Shiro seems ready to choke on his words. “I’m not sure, honestly.”

Keith sighs and pulls himself up from the floor so they can kiss again. He can feel Shiro soften slightly under his mouth, captivated in a way he wasn’t when that mouth was elsewhere.

It’s interesting. It gives him an idea.

A bewildered Shiro looking on, Keith pulls his wallet out of his back pocket and, from it, a packet of lube. He’d put it in there weeks ago, a pathetic but apparently successful attempt to bend the universe to his will.

His palms now slick, Keith reaches between them and starts to stroke Shiro’s cock. They kiss.

Against Shiro’s lips, Keith mutters, “How are you going to fuck me later if you can’t relax for a second?”

Shiro lets out a moan that rattles his chest.

“There we go.” Keith moves his hand faster.

“I’m not going to,” says Shiro, half-grunting.

“What?”

Shiro’s hand tightens around Keith’s ass. “Not going to fuck you.”

Keith almost laughs. “You aren’t, huh?” It’s funny, because Shiro is literally thrusting into his palm right now, and yet he thinks he can still play hard to get. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Shiro lets go of Keith’s ass and slides his hands up, lingering at the stretch of bare lower back where the shirt’s ridden up, then worrying around his shoulders, and finally—cupping his cheeks. He looks into Keith’s face, his lips parted.

The gentleness of it catches Keith off guard. His hand slows for a second—and then he pumps faster and harder. His own breathing grows labored. His hair sticks to his forehead and the nape of his neck.

Shiro says softly, pain in his eyes. “This is wrong.”

“Shut up unless you want me to stop.” Keith doesn’t even fucking know what he means by that, _this is wrong._ It scares him. It’s a scary thing to say to someone when they’re giving you a hand job.

“I don’t.” Shiro leans forward and presses his forehead against Keith’s. He’s hot to the touch, and his breath is hot too. This gesture—when Shiro reaches for Keith and holds them together like that, firm but gentle—he might as well have reached for Keith’s grip on reality and jerked it away. They’re on top of a mountain on a chilly fall evening and Keith thinks he might burn to death from all this heat. His erection presses against the inside of his jeans and he finds himself bucking into the couch for a second of friction.

Shiro is moaning again. Most of it’s nonsense, incoherent babbling, and then a faint, “I want to…” Shiro’s hips twitch, and again, more violently. He pulls away from Keith, closes his eyes, wraps his fingers around Keith’s bicep, his nails pricking the skin. Keith looks down just in time to watch Shiro coming in his hand.

Keith can’t complain about the babbling. Hell, he can’t even speak. His mouth hangs open.

When it’s over, when he’s spent, Shiro sinks into the couch, his head falling back and his eyes falling closed.

For long seconds there’s silence but for the two of them breathing, almost in tandem, steading themselves. Keith wipes his hand on his thigh. That should make him feel victorious, getting to wipe off Shiro’s cum after all the pining, but instead he grapples with an emotion he can’t name. His heart beats so hard and fast he can feel its echo up his throat.

Shiro raises his head to look at Keith, eyes half-lidded. He reaches out. At first Keith stares at the proffered hand, before he realizes Shiro is asking for his in return.

He gives it. Puts his hand in Shiro’s larger one. The way Shiro’s fingers dwarf Keith’s makes Keith shudder.

Shiro guides Keith gently up onto the couch, pressing him onto his back. So Keith finds himself lying back, staring down his own torso, with Shiro hanging over him.

Keith’s face burns. No number of combative comments about fucking could’ve prepared him for the reality of Shiro right there, on top of him. Pushing up the hem of his shirt to kiss his stomach.

The soft skin of Keith’s stomach twitches at the touch of Shiro’s lips. It’s a slow kiss, and that makes it—worse. Shiro has to know how hard Keith is, after all that before, and yet he’s taking his time to kiss his way up and down Keith’s sternum. It’s excruciating and incredible.

“I thought this was wrong,” Keith hisses, as he feels Shiro’s teeth nip his lower stomach, making him flinch and gasp. Shiro glances up and Keith catches a dark flash of his eyes.

“It is.”

“I thought you weren’t going to fuck me.” Keith’s voice hitches and this second dig is louder, higher than the last one.

Shiro undoes the fly of Keith’s jeans. “I’m not.” He straightens up enough that Keith can see him tucking his cock away.

Well. Shit.

Keith doesn’t have time for disappointment: Shiro’s expression has changed from before, the pained eyes, the protests. Keith doesn’t know what it means, but he finds himself excited about whatever it will bring. All of this is new, all of it feels good, and the way Shiro looks at him makes Keith feel wanted in every corner of his body. There’s an emotion he can name, finally. He feels _wanted_.

Shiro slides the jeans off Keith’s hips and legs, and then does the same to his boxer briefs, so Keith is lying there hard in just a t-shirt.

Shiro sits back on his knees and takes in the sight. He mumbles, “Jesus.”

“What?” snaps Keith. Self-conscious. He can’t help it.

Shiro doesn’t answer, at least not verbally. He dips forward and presses his mouth to Keith’s for a fleeting moment, then begins moving down Keith’s torso again, toward his leaking, aching erection.

It’s bad, at this point. _Just touch it,_ Keith would beg, if he weren’t above begging. _Just brush it. Anything._ He doesn’t want to come easily, but fuck, it feels like a speck of dust might do him in right now.

Shiro positions himself between Keith’s legs, his face hovering inches from Keith’s erection. The proximity only makes it worse—he can feel the heat of Shiro’s breath against the ruddy skin of his cock, how it prickles but doesn’t quite stimulate. Keith makes a noise through his teeth. Shiro smiles.

So Shiro’s a tease. Keith would be annoyed if he didn’t fucking love it.

Shiro kisses the side of his cock and he arches his back and moans. Shiro slides his tongue around the head of Keith’s cock, lapping up the cum formed there, and Keith muffles his groan with a throw pillow.

Once Shiro starts, he doesn’t let up, and he’s—unlike Keith, this isn’t his first blow job. Every second, Keith thinks, must be the last second he can keep it together. He’s constantly on the edge of breaking against the wet, warm machinations of Shiro’s mouth and tongue and lips.

But Keith holds on. Or maybe Shiro is doing that, walking him around in circles. Shiro’s a tease, after all.

Shiro pulls back and Keith swears under his breath—he’d been getting close.

Shiro has taken up staring at the half-empty packet of lube sitting on the coffee table. He reaches for it, and Keith thinks _, holy crap_. Shiro might just do it.

With that thought comes a swell of nerves. Because it’d be a first for him, but not for Shiro. Because he feels like an education cultivated through porn might have some gaps. Keith waits for Shiro to pull out his dick again, stomach flipping at the memory of how big it looked when it was hard.

But Shiro settles down between Keith’s legs again and kisses the inside of his pelvic bone.

“Did you change your mind or what?” Keith asks. He hears how nervous he sounds and winces.

“Not exactly?” Shiro glances up at Keith. Does he look a little nervous too, or is that Keith’s eyes betraying him? “I want to…” That’s the same thing Shiro said earlier. This time, he slides his hand down past Keith’s balls, to—his ass. Shiro lays the pad of his finger against Keith’s entrance, takes the packet of lube in his other hand, and looks to Keith for a sign.

Keith nods, just once. All this is so rushed, he feels like he might not have time for more.

He shuts his eyes until he feels wetness against the tight coil of muscle.

“It’s your turn to relax,” Shiro murmurs. “Keep breathing.” With his free hand, he gently strokes Keith’s cock, not fast enough to make him come but steady enough he stays hard.

Keith tries, he does. Tries to breathe, tries to stay slack against the gentle circular motions of Shiro’s finger loosening him up. Keith is sure Shiro has done this before, with how confidently he moves. Of course Shiro has lots of expertise loosening up asses, he’d have to, to get them ready for his stupid big cock.

Keith tries to fight off a laugh and can’t: he giggles, and subsequently relaxes right into Shiro’s hands. Shiro doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, he doesn’t react. Maybe that’s supposed to happen—laughing during sex. Keith… wouldn’t really know. If you are supposed to laugh, you’re probably not supposed to do it at your own jokes, made at the expense of your partner, and only in your own head. But whatever, Keith’s a goddamn maverick.

Shiro slides inside Keith with his middle finger, just an inch. It’s not the first time Keith’s had something up his ass, but it’s the first time that thing has been attached to another human, and the feeling is different. Less mechanical. More intimate. That’s no surprise.

Shiro can do more with his fingers, too, than Keith could imitate on his own. He can take his precious time sinking his finger deeper—one knuckle, and then another many seconds later, so that Keith feels every inch of it. He carefully works up to the goal, so that by the time he reaches that spot and stimulates it, Keith’s stomach has coiled in anticipation.

The contact sends a twitch through Keith’s hips. One of those carnal, uncontrollable, slightly embarrassing movements that reveals what Shiro is doing to him, whether or not he wants Shiro to know. He hears himself inhale sharply. Shiro works him a little more, massaging just enough to pull a deep groan from Keith. Keith tries to muffle the sound with a hand over his mouth, but the groan gets away from him, until he’s almost choking on it. His eyes water. The tears spill down his cheeks and leave wet spots on the upholstery.

Shiro puts his lips against Keith’s cock again, making Keith look down—and holy fucking shit, the sight of Shiro between his legs with a mouthful of dick? He’s fucking done for. That’s it, he can’t stop himself anymore. They’ve waited too long and he’s dying to come. The itchy heat of release builds in his abdomen. He steadies his breath, wanting to get ready, so that maybe he’ll come gracefully and give Shiro the right to be smug—he knows he can’t let Shiro be smug, though he isn’t sure why the concept bothers him so much. He just knows he has to fight it.

Except that he can’t, after a point. Another one of those guttural sounds claws out of Keith’s chest, and he thrusts into Shiro’s mouth without much regard for gentleness, let alone grace. He digs his fingers into Shiro’s hair, into his scalp. His vision turns blurry and starred.

It’s not an orgasm like any he’s ever had. And sure, that makes sense: he’s a virgin in many respects. There’s shit he did tonight, shit he had done to him, that he’d never done before. But that only accounts for part of what this was, he realizes, as he comes down from it—as he regains feeling in his hips and head—as Shiro pulls off and away from him, gradually retracting his finger. He’s wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. They take a long moment to catch their breaths. 

“Sorry,” Keith manages, realizing what he did. “Did you…” He doesn’t want to say it. He’s shy, now, all of sudden. After the fact.

Shiro clears his throat. “You didn’t give me much choice.” He glances sideways at Keith, sees the expression on his face, and adds, “Don’t worry about it.”

Having dismissed Keith from guilt, Shiro sits forward and puts his head in his hands.

What happened felt especially good, Keith realizes, because it burned bright and fast and so very hot. It consumed them in seconds and minutes, and for those seconds and minutes there was nothing else. Nothing but them and the fire.

Now the fire’s out, doused, run its course, and Keith finds himself looking around, seeing nothing but smoking piles of ash. The air might as well be thick with smoke, it’s so heavy between them. He sits forward and scrambles for his boxers.

He tries to make eye contact with Shiro again. He fails. Shiro won’t lift his head from his hands. His fingers are wound tightly into his hair, and it looks like it must be hurting him. Perhaps that’s the point.

Keith doesn’t take shame lightly. It’s an uncommon emotion for him.

Like many of Shiro’s moods, however, his shame is infectious. And Keith is the one who has to gather his clothes from the floor—Keith is the one who doesn’t understand what Shiro meant when he said what they were doing was wrong. He doesn’t deserve shame, doesn’t deserve what he’s being made to feel.

“I’m going to go rinse off,” he announces.

No reaction. Not even a perfunctory nod.

 _Piece of shit,_ Keith thinks. He gets up and stomps toward the bathroom, where he turns on the water and sits on the edge of the tub in silence.

He’s angry. He’s angry because it comes to him easier than other, more complicated feelings, like hurt and regret. When he’s angry, he at least knows who he is, and what he might do. Anything else is unpredictable and risky and bad. Yeah, he’ll be mad, at Shiro and the world—because Shiro should be grateful that Keith wanted him, he should feel _blessed_.

Only Keith’s a nineteen-year-old who keeps saying he’s twenty, who’s probably going to spend the rest of his life on the run or locked up, who barely finished high school, who can do one thing, one thing that’s only good for one thing. He’s not exactly a catch. Of course Shiro is embarrassed—he’d succumbed. He’s a former marine who fell for some adolescent ass-waggling.

Furious, Keith strips and dunks his face into the freezing shower. The temperature is more than he was prepared for, and he starts, stumbling back and slamming his foot up into the tap. Great.

Now bruised and bleeding both physically and emotionally, he shuts off the water and dries off, and starts rifling through the drawers for anything to staunch his cut. Unsurprisingly, the contents of the bathroom in Shiro’s family’s mountain cabin are sparse. Extra toilet paper, though not much; cleaning solution; hand soap; a hairdryer.

What’s Shiro guilty about, anyway? That he used his family’s house to get off with some kid he met robbing banks? Why be ashamed of that when you _rob banks_? It’s not like you give any fucks about taking other people’s stuff. It’s a double standard, hypocritical.

Keith hates hypocrites. He’s never had any thoughts about hypocrites before, but tonight he’s decided he hates them.

He reaches into a drawer, patting around for a stray band-aid, and there’s nothing. Frustrated—this is the last drawer, there must be something—he strains toward the back of the drawer and feels a prick on the back of his hand.

“Fuck!” He retracts it quickly. There’s a ragged cut on one of his knuckles, bleeding. So now he needs two fucking bandaids, cool.

The drawer itself is empty, but Keith returns to feel around in the empty spot in the cabinet for whatever cut him, this time with care. And he finds… something small, and metal. It has a slight jagged edge. Puzzled, not thinking, he pulls on what feels like a latch.

There’s a thunk as the latch opens and a heavy object falls into his palm. Several little booklets rain down around it, landing in heaps on the bathroom floor.

Keith’s mouth hangs open. He can’t process this thing he’s holding. The weight of it, the cold touch of the metal. He’s never held a gun before.

The booklets on the floor. They are small and leather and some are in languages he can’t understand. He flips one over and sees a picture of Shiro on the inside, but the name beside his face is unfamiliar. The top reads UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. Keith checks another one of the passports: another picture of Shiro, another unfamiliar name. This one has a maple leaf and says CANADA.

Keith sets the gun down on the floor beside the passports. His mind ought to be going a mile a minute, but oddly, he’s just—stopped. He doesn’t need to do much to put together the pieces of this puzzle.

This house, with its generic art and total lack of personal artifacts, is not a family cabin. Family cabins don’t have secret drawers for fake passports and handguns.

No, this is somebody’s safehouse. Which begs the question, who’s safe here?

Because it’s not Keith.

 

 

 

 

 

During the day, the cabin’s porch has a spectacular view of the mountains, but in the darkness it’s black, punctured only by the lights of a couple distant towns.

Shiro came to the porch because he needed fresh air. Now he finds himself mesmerized by the lights, which seem to grow and shrink and grow again the longer he looks at them. The unrhythmic but repetitive motion distracts him from the nausea in the pit of his stomach.

Shiro has never regretted quitting smoking as much as he does right now. What he wouldn’t do for a cigarette—it’s the only thing that could stop his hands from shaking. He grips the armrests of the rocking chair harder, hoping that will help, but when he relaxes the tremors persist.

It was a stupid idea. There’s been a lot of that lately.

He starts at a noise from the house. The screen door swings open and Keith steps out onto the porch, cast in shadow by the meager light, hands twisted behind his back. Shiro swallows hard at the sight of him.

There’s been a lot of that lately, too.

“Hey,” Shiro says, attempting to sound normal, and not how he feels, which is like a reanimated corpse. The attempt fails. He sounds hoarse and half-alive.

Keith doesn’t return the greeting. He’s quiet for a long time, and Shiro wants to say something else. Maybe something he should’ve said before. Maybe something he should’ve said weeks ago.

Keith beats him there.

“Who are you?”

 _Who are you?_ He could mean anything by that. Shiro tells himself not to panic. He’s gotten through this before.

Again, Keith beats him: “I mean really.” He extends a hand. It takes Shiro a moment to recognize what he’s holding. “These are good fakes,” says Keith, his voice unusually steely. “Really good. You’re not some fry cook turned body man, so who the fuck are you?”

If Keith found the passports, then he also found… Shiro stands up, slowly. “Okay,” he manages.

There’s a procedure for this, just like there’s a procedure for everything, but that procedure doesn’t include provisions for what to do when you’ve just fucked one of your targets, or when you think you might be in love with him.

“That’s not answering my question,” says Keith, louder. Losing some composure. “Who are you? What’s your real name?”

“Shiro is my real name.”

Keith voice jumps an octave. “You’re lying!”

“Okay.” _Fuck_. “Okay, I’m going to answer your question.”

Except the answer sticks in Shiro’s throat. At some point in the past few months he’d split himself in two to make this work, and now he has to stitch the halves of himself back together. It hurts, it’s excruciating, both the act of admitting and knowing what must come after.

Keith reveals his other hand and, as Shiro suspected, the handgun clutched in it. He doesn’t point the gun at Shiro, and the safety is still on, but handling the weapon is a violence in and of itself. He clutches it tightly while also seeming to hold it away from his body—scared of the gun, but more scared of being alone with Shiro.

That fucking stings. Shiro shuts his eyes. He knows the gun isn’t loaded, and that Keith wouldn’t know how to load it even if he found the bullets, too. He raises his hands anyway, just enough to indicate surrender.

“Tell me,” Keith says, with audible desperation. “Just tell me who you work for. I don’t—I don’t fucking care, I’m not loyal. Just stop fucking _lying_.”

No lying. Okay. “Okay,” says Shiro, yet again, and he sees Keith tense in frustration, ready to be disappointed, again. “I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Keith’s glare melts into confusion. His arms go slack. “You’re…”

Shiro makes sure to keep his hands up anyway. “I’ve been investigating the Galra—”

He stops talking because Keith has disappeared back into the house. Shit.

Shiro runs after him. “Keith!” The gun and the passports are on the coffee table, and he can hear Keith stomping around down the hall toward the bedrooms. “Keith,” he calls again. “I need you to trust me when I say you’re not in trouble. You, and Pidge, and Lance…”

Keith emerges from the hall with his bag over his shoulder. He breezes into the kitchen, passing Shiro without a glance.

“Keith, please.” Shiro’s chest hurts. He just needs a second of Keith’s time, a shred of the benefit of the doubt. He doesn’t deserve it, he knows, but it might fix some of this if he could make Keith understand. “What happened with us... I didn’t want it to be like that.”

Keith stops as he’s coming out of the kitchen, and Shiro steps toward him, hopeful.

He doesn’t see the fist. One second Shiro is looking into Keith’s face, pleading, and the next he’s doubled over, pain shooting up through his nose into his skull. He can feel blood, hot and wet, on his upper lip.

“Don’t ever talk about us,” Keith says, somewhere above him. Shiro slumps against the wall and sinks to the floor, shocked and devastated into silence.

He listens to footsteps moving away. The screen door squeaking open. The sound of Keith’s voice trailing off: “Fuck you. Go to hell.” The car starts outside. Shiro doesn’t have the wherewithal to consider that it’s his car, not Keith’s. That seems like the least of his concerns, right now, as the engine’s grumble fades into the quiet mountain night, leaving him alone with a busted nose and bullet-less gun. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone is messy in this fic and i'm loving it.


	7. talk

Allura has seen few things as pathetic as Shiro on the afternoon she and Coran arrive at the safe house. They pull up the gravel drive and he’s outside, waiting for them on the front porch, head in his hands. They park and get out of the car and when he looks up, there is dried blood around his nostrils and his eyes are rimmed red. It is remarkably, shockingly sad. She’s always thought of her partner as beyond fragility, somehow, even if and when he got emotionally caught up in a case. But this… she can tell at a glance that he’s shattered.

“All right!” Coran begins, with his usual buoyancy. Allura resists the urge to kick him, holding her tongue behind pursed lips. “Let’s talk about what happened.”

Shiro says, “Keith Kogane punched me in the face and stole my car.”

Allura forces herself to smile. “Shiro…” She hopes the smile might shift the expression on Shiro’s face into something slightly less desolate, which it doesn’t. “I did notice the car was gone. That’s okay. We have procedures for that sort of thing.” She exchanges a sideways, uncertain glance with Coran.

“So,” Coran says, louder. “You got made!”

Shiro’s eyes fall closed. He sighs heavily. “Yep.”

“How did it happen?” Allura asks.

Shiro clears his throat, rubs his face. “He found a gun and some other stuff I’d stashed just in case. And he… confronted me. I had to decide whether to tell him the truth or risk him thinking I’m more dangerous than I am.” Another sigh. The force of it makes Shiro’s shoulders tremble. “I went with the truth, hoping it would… make him realize I don’t mean him harm. And maybe he did realize that, I don’t know. He still punched me in the face and ran.”

“You were right to tell him, I think,” says Coran. He reaches out and gives Shiro a little pat on the shoulder; to Allura, it looks more awkward than reassuring, but Coran is trying at least. He understands the toll this kind of deep cover work takes on his agents. “Can I ask…” He looks at Allura, like he wants permission to ask what he’s about to ask, but somehow he doesn’t get that the widening of her eyes means _no, absolutely not, do not_. “Why didn’t you just arrest him?”

Horrified, Allura turns away from the conversation, pretending to be intrigued by the pine trees.

“You know, Coran,” says Shiro, barely disguising what Allura interprets as devastation. “I don’t know.”

“You could’ve taken him into custody. We could get him immunity if he testifies! Could’ve gotten him immunity, that is. Now that he’s run from an agent he might be seen as non-cooperative…”

Shiro nods, his eyes unfocused. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I should have arrested him.”

“But… you didn’t.” Coran looks between Shiro and Allura, scratching his chin. “What happened? Did you panic?”

“Sure,” says Shiro heavily. “Let’s say I panicked. That’s believable.”

“Believable?” Allura echoes, drawn from silence by curiosity. “If you didn’t panic, then what did happen?”

Shiro gets up, swallowing a groan at his stiffness. “I said I don’t know. That’s all I’ve got for you. Take me off the case and send me to a Bureau psychologist if you want a real answer.”

“We aren’t taking you off the case unless you think we have to,” says Coran, almost pouting. “You’ve made good progress. We’ve got an opportunity, here. We can turn Kogane into a informant.”

Shiro laughs. Allura is taken aback by it, how humorless it is. She realizes she’s never heard him laugh disingenuously before. “That’s not happening,” says Shiro. “Did I mention he punched me in the face and stole my car?”

Allura gives Coran a gentle whack on his forearm—a cue to back off—and steps forward to try her hand at changing Shiro’s mind. “Why don’t the three of us go inside and discuss it further? I’m sure we can figure out a solution. I would hate to think we’d lost months of undercover work because you told one of the Galra’s victims that you mean to help him.”

Shiro is standing on the porch of the safe house, so when he looks at Allura, he’s looking down on her; the angle casts a peculiar shadow over his eyes. “I’d hate to think that, too. Doesn’t mean it’s not what happened.”

There is enough dejection in his voice to stop Allura from arguing, at least right away.

“I say Allura is right. Let’s go inside and hash it out,” declares Coran. He bounds up the porch steps, leaving Allura and Shiro frowning at each other. “All hope is not lost, Agent Shirogane. We will find our silver lining!”

 

 

 

 

 

Keith has dumped dozens of stolen cars in his life. Sometimes the total time it takes him to hotwire a car is more than the minutes he spends actually driving it. He knows the best spots, knows how to make his escape, knows how to keep his pattern just short of recognizable.

But this is the first time in years he’s stolen a car belonging to someone he knows. The familiarity adds a complicating factor when he thinks about dumping the vehicle. This is the car in which Shiro drove him to the mountain house; it’s the car Shiro used to drop him by his dad’s when they left. This is the car that had the mysteriously dead battery, the night that Shiro asked Keith for a ride home.

If it’s a police vehicle, it’s a shitty one. You don’t imagine government agents patrolling the streets in ten-year-old sedans with a hundred and eighty thousand miles and half-functioning AC. But maybe that’s the point. It’s unassuming.

In the day since Keith fled, he’s discovered only a few personal items stored in the car: a jug of whey protein and a blender bottle in the backseat; a gym bag and running shoes in the trunk; a lighter and an empty carton of Marlboro 27s discarded under the driver’s seat. The registration papers in the glove department are obnoxiously normal, and the car is registered in Shiro’s name, or at least what he claims is his name. There are no fuzzy dice or prayer beads hanging from the rearview. His radio presets are all default stations.

It’s stupid, Keith thinks. A couple weeks ago he might’ve found the car’s essential Shiro-ness charming, but now, he just—keeps playing with the lighter like it’s a toy, contemplating what it’d look like if he tossed it near the gas tank and walked away.

And yet he still hasn’t dumped the fucking car. Time is running short, now. It must be equipped with some kind of tracking device, meaning Shiro will come looking for it, and for Keith, likely with a SWAT team in tow. Keith wishes the idea of rotting in prison scared him more, but honestly? Not having to worry about any of this Galra shit anymore sounds like a cakewalk. Until he thinks about his dad, anyway.

He can’t be in prison when his dad passes. Because if Keith goes to prison, his dad _will_ pass. There’s no one else to take care of him, no one else who cares about him. He’s a poor old man with cancer and Keith is the only thing between him and dying alone in a hospital, then getting buried in a city grave.

Keith runs his hands over the dashboard of Shiro’s shitty, stupid car. He’s got to dump it soon. It shouldn’t be this hard. If he can contemplate blowing it up, he shouldn’t be torn up about dumping it—except that he really fucking is. The thought tears at him, makes his throat close up. This car is his last remaining connection to what should’ve been a good thing.

He starts at the sound of tires pulling into the gravel lot where he sits parked, waiting. He recognizes the outline of Pidge’s parents’ SUV as it rolls into the spot beside him. He waits to hear a car door open before he gets out.

“Keith?”

“Yeah, Pidge.”

The SUV’s passenger door pops open and collides with Shiro’s side mirror. Keith finds himself regretting that Lance didn’t take the mirror off entirely.

“Is that Shiro’s car?” Pidge asks, as the three of them come together in a huddle of sorts. It’s chilly and Pidge hugs her hoodie to her torso. The only light comes from the moon and a single streetlamp above the gravel lot—the parking area for a trailhead in the foothills outside the city. They could easily be a mile from other human beings.

Keith nods.

Pidge’s anxiety is audible. “Why do you have Shiro’s car?”

“Also, why’d you ask us to come meet you in the middle of fucking nowhere?” Lance chimes in. “I swear to god, Kogane, if this is a hit—”

“I have Shiro’s car because I stole it.”

Pidge and Lance are shocked into silence. He decides he might as well hit them with the big revelation, as long as he’s not pulling punches.

“Shiro is an FBI agent. That house he took me to was a safe house. When I found out, I took the car and left him there.”

It’s quiet for what feels like a long time, which is why Keith jumps out of his skin when Lance suddenly shouts, “ _Shiro is a_ cop _?”_

To which Pidge replies, eerily calm, “He’s not a cop, he’s an agent. That’s different.”

Lance runs his hands down his face and begins to pace, his long legs spraying gravel with each step. “Yeah, different—worse, actually. Agent is worse than cop. Agent is like Cop 2.0 or some shit.”

“I knew he had a law enforcement background,” says Pidge, prompting Lance and Keith to exchange incredulous looks. “The Galra like to recruit former officers, okay! There’s tons of dirty ex-cops working for them because they know how to game the system.”

So Shiro hadn’t lied about his name. Keith doesn’t know how to feel.

Pidge adjusts her glasses, sighing. “I googled him and saw some pictures of him when he was in the Marines, and then there was one of him getting an award a few years ago. Then there was nothing. I assumed he got fired.”

Keith grits his teeth. “He didn’t.”

“I knew there was something he wasn’t telling us,” Pidge murmurs. She lifts her chin to meet Keith’s eye. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize.”

“Not your fault,” Keith says. “It’s his fault for lying to our faces.”

Lance’s voice jumps an octave, saying, “Oh my god, holy shit, he lied _to our faces_!”

“Did he try to arrest you? And you still got away?” Pidge asks.

“Actually, he didn’t.” This one thing Shiro said has nagged at Keith for the past twenty-four hours: “He said we aren’t in trouble.” Even in a moment where he had explicitly, inarguably fucked up, Shiro made it hard to be mad at him—no, not _hard_ , but complicated. All these factors complicate what Keith wants to do more than anything, which is demonize Shiro, and Keith feels even more confused and upset than he did when he found the passports and the gun. He retreats into his anger because he can feel anger thoughtlessly, and that’s what he wants right now. Something simple.

The words _we aren’t in trouble_ make Lance freeze and turn around to stare at Keith. Pidge’s eyes, similarly, bore into him, and her mouth falls open.

“Sorry,” Lance finally manages. “Did you say we… Shiro, the FBI agent, said we aren’t in trouble?”

Keith nods. “It’s what he said. He’s lied to our faces before.”

But Pidge is shaking her head. “He can’t lie about that. That’s entrapment. If they did try to prosecute us, we could use it against them.”

“How do you know that?” says Lance, squinting.

“You didn’t do your research on the basics of criminal law before becoming a criminal?”

“No,” Lance replies weakly.

Pidge addresses Keith, intent. “Are you sure he said that? That he’s not coming after us?”

“I’m… yeah, I’m sure he said that.”

Pidge nods once, then places a hand on each of their shoulders. “We should turn ourselves in.”

Lance reels back at the mere suggestion, throwing his arms up. “Wh-h-oa, fuck no! I’m no snitch! I know what the Galra do to snitches.”

“Think about it, though,” Pidge continues excitedly. “What do we _want_? To get rid of Haggar, and save Hunk, and make it so we don’t have to work for the bad guys anymore. What better way to do that than working for the good guys?”

Keith can tell at a glance that Pidge’s argument is working on Lance. The thought of being one-against-two on this issue has him feeling ill.

“If we agree to testify against Haggar, we can easily get commuted sentences—they might even grant me a immunity because I’m still a minor,” Pidge says to herself. “And they’ll put us in witness protection, too. That has to be safer than just running on our own, doesn’t it?”

Lance is nodding slowly, his eyes big. “Witness protection. They’d just… move us away from here. Let us start over. Somewhere the Galra couldn’t get us…”

“Yes, exactly.”

Keith can sense himself losing ground with Lance. Fuck, Fuck. “We can’t turn ourselves in,” he says. They both turn to look at him.

“Why not?” Pidge asks.

“Yeah, I’m kind of wondering the same thing,” says Lance.

It takes Keith a second enough to wrangle his words. He’s so overcome with anger, it seems almost impossible to express. “We can’t trust Shiro.”

Pidge frowns. “But he said we weren’t in trouble, and he didn’t try to arrest you. He hasn’t even come after you yet and you… stole his car.” _No_ , Keith wants to scream. _You’re wrong_. He can’t say why, but he knows she’s wrong about Shiro, he’s sure of it. “And if we turn ourselves in,” she adds, “it’ll make us look good. We can tell them we’ll come willingly if they protect us.”

Lance takes a step toward Keith and slaps his upper arm. “I think she might be right, man. This could be the smartest thing for us.”

“Yeah, and what if you’re wrong? What if he was lying?” Keith tries not to raise his voice, but his poker face fails him again. “We could turn ourselves in and they could just throw us in jail. They could give us nothing. I can’t afford a lawyer, and public defenders are shit. What then?”

Lance is looking at Pidge, waiting for her to answer Keith’s questions. He seems to be pinging back and forth between their two entrenched stances.

“There’s nothing we can do that doesn’t involve risks,” says Pidge evenly. “I’d rather take the risk that doesn’t put us at Haggar’s mercy for the rest of our lives, personally.”

Lance turns to Keith again and waits.

Keith is stubborn, but he isn’t stupid.

He can feel his argument falling apart in his hands. If he continues working for Haggar, sure, he could avoid jail—but if she finds out he’s been associating ( _associating_ ) with an undercover FBI agent, he’ll be dead in a ditch the next morning, and there’s no helping his dad if he’s dead in a ditch. Jail at least there’s parole, there’s visiting hours, there’s an end in sight. Keith is young; he could do his time and get out and live a full life.

He lets his head fall back and stares upward for a moment. This far from the city, the stars are crisp and clear, canvasing the sky. It soothes the anger surging in his chest like heartburn; he swallows hard.

Going to the FBI, he reminds himself, isn’t the same as forgiving Shiro. What Shiro did to him, using him, lying to him, none of that changes if Keith takes an out to save his own ass. Hell, maybe there’s someone he can tell about what happened. Maybe Keith could cost Shiro his job, and make him feel a shred of the pain he’d caused Keith.

Keith half-smiles and drops his head. “Yeah, okay. We turn ourselves in.”

“Wow, holy shit,” Lance mutters. “We’re really doing this?”

“We are,” says Pidge confidently. “We just have to figure out how.”

Lance eyes her. “What do you mean… how?”

“What, did you think we were just going to walk into the Charlotte FBI building?” Pidge laughs.

Lance gives Keith a look like, _yeah, duh?_ Keith shrugs in response.

Pidge catches on to Lance’s confusion and sighs. “If the Galra are still watching us within the city limits, that’s not going to look good. We need the FBI to come to us. Preferably it’ll look like they’re arresting us… I’m sure I can explain that to them.”

“So… we… call the FBI?” says Lance.

“No—what if our phones are bugged?” She bites her lip. “We’re going to have to get creative.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” Keith realizes aloud. They blink at him. He glances over his shoulder, to where Shiro’s car is parked, inevitably pinging back to some FBI server somewhere. “I’ve had Shiro’s car for a day now. They can’t be far.”

Lance puts his hands on his hips. “Wait… so… you had us meet you out here _knowing_ there’s probably a full SWAT team tailing you?”

Keith shrugs. “I could outrun them if I needed to.”

“Well,” says Pidge, stepping between Keith and Lance. “Good thing we’re letting ourselves get caught, huh! Now we just have to wait.”

“Yeah, what luck,” Lance grunts. “Did either of you bring anything to eat?”

 

 

 

 

 

The sun has begun to rise by the time the first large black SUV arrives at the trailhead. It’s followed by another SUV, and what looks like a SWAT vehicle.

Lance and Pidge have both passed out in Pidge’s car and Keith bangs on the window to wake them as the vehicles slowly surround them.

The first of the SUVs parks, and for a minute nothing happens. Pidge, Lance, and Keith step out into the center of the gravel lot. Lance puts his hands up. Keith’s heart pounds against his ribcage. Anything could happen right now, and all he can think about is whether or not Shiro’s in one of those SUVs.

Then, finally, the passenger door of the first SUV opens, and a woman steps out. She has brown skin and platinum blonde hair pulled neatly into a bun, and she wears an all-black suit with a white button-down. She looks more like she should be playing an FBI agent on television than actually cleaning up the streets.

“Keith. Lance. Katie.” The woman speaks with an accent—British, if Keith had to guess—and addresses each of them directly when she says their names. “It’s lovely to finally meet you all. I’m Agent Allura.”

“Hi,” says Lance, flatly, making Pidge roll her eyes.

“Where’s Shiro?” she asks.

Allura smiles. “He’s waiting for us back my office.” The knot in Keith’s stomach melts. “I’m sure you’re anxious to see him. I know he has some things he’d like to explain to you.”

Pidge pulls a face. “Yeah, sure. I bet he does.”

Allura’s eyes drift from Keith to Lance to Pidge. “Am I correct in thinking that the three of you plan on coming with me willingly?”

Pidge nods, as does Lance. Keith is the last one to signal his willingness.

Allura is visibly relieved by this. “That’s wonderful. Your cooperation is deeply appreciated.” It hadn’t occurred to Keith that she could be nervous about this, too, but she’s human, isn’t she? She’s like Shiro. _This is wrong_.

“Can we go ahead and get out of here?” says Keith. “Do we just get in the car?”

“Ah, yes.” Allura turns to Pidge. “If you’d like to give me the keys, Katie, I can have an agent follow us in your parents’ car. I’m guessing you don’t want it left out here.”

“Yeah, I… don’t?” Pidge fishes the keys from her pocket and hands them over.

“This is weirdly anti-climatic,” Lance mutters, as the three of them pile into the backseat of Allura’s SUV.

“Do you want them to put on the sirens?” Pidge asks dryly.

“What, you don’t think that would be cool?”

Keith pulls out his headphones and slips them in, drowning them out for the rest of the ride back to the city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While Keith, Lance, and Pidge waited for the agents and the SWAT vehicle, they’d talked about how things would go once they arrived at the Bureau headquarters. Pidge seemed to know the procedure, though Keith couldn’t tell how much of that knowledge she’d gleaned from television and how much was verified fact. But her predictions prove largely accurate: almost as soon as they set foot in the building, they’re separated, placed in individual interrogation rooms.

A man with curly red-hair and an impressive mustache pops in and introduces himself to Keith as Agent Coran. He offers Keith a bevy of amenities—a sandwich, or Chinese food if he’d like, and sodas and coffee, or tea, if he’s more of a tea type of guy.

“Water is fine,” says Keith. He has no appetite. In the wall directly opposite him is a panel of highly reflective glass; Shiro is on the other side, has to be, and so he finds himself glaring at his own reflection. “When am I going to get to tell you what I know?”

Coran nods, looks between Keith and the glass a couple of times, and chirps, “All right! I’ll get your water and we’ll get started, how about?”

“Yeah.”

Coran leaves the interrogation room, and Keith can imagines the conversation going on behind the glass. _He doesn’t seem particularly talkative,_ Coran would say. _Something you want to tell us, Shiro?_

Keith smiles into the glass, the expression slowly widening into a grin.

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s not a good idea,” Shiro insists. “You don’t want to send me in there.”

“He’s most familiar with you,” says Coran, with a chin-scratch. “I know he’s upset, but surely the bond you’ve formed with is repairable. He turned himself in, after all.”

“Let me talk to one of the others instead. Lance, I’ll talk to Lance.”

“Eventually you’ll talk to all of them—but we wanted you to start with Kogane. He was the whistleblower!”

Allura half-listens to the argument between her partner and her boss, more interested in the strange grin that’s come over Keith’s face on the other side of the glass. He’s looking right at her, almost meeting her eye, though he can’t know that.

Allura has been through hundreds of hours of interviews and training qualifying her as an interrogation expert. But her expertise is barely necessary, in this case; anyone with a decent understanding of body language could read the barely-contained rage coming off Keith Kogane. He sits with his arms across his chest, balancing his chair on its back legs, grinning defiantly into the one-way glass.

“Takashi,” says Allura, an idea occurring to her. “It has to be you who talks to him. He wants to talk to you.”

Shiro grunts skeptically behind her. “I highly doubt that.”

“No, it’s true. He’s furious, and it must be with you. You’ll get the most candid response from him.”

“I have to agree with Allura in this case, Shiro,” says Coran.

Allura swivels in her chair and looks up at Shiro, eyes twinkling. “You don’t mind taking a few rhetorical punches, do you?”

Shiro’s last encounter with Keith remains evident in the purple-yellow bruises around his nose. He pulls his lip between his teeth, then shakes his head. “I don’t mind, no.”

“If at any point he gets too worked up,” Allura says, “I’ll come in and ask you to leave. If I act like you annoy me, too, I can get him on my side. All you’ve got to do is loosen him up a bit.”

Shiro looks vaguely ill at the suggestion, but he’s intuitive enough to realize he doesn’t have much of a choice. “Okay.”

Coran winks at Allura, who smiles, pleased with herself.

“I’ll do it. Just give me a second,” says Shiro, and he exits into the hall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keith forgot there would be bruises.

The blotches down the center of Shiro’s face make him look tired, haggard, moreso than Keith can remember ever seeing him. He evidently hasn’t shaved since Keith last saw him.

The strikingly pathetic nature of his appearance is enough to distract Keith, for a second, from the fact that Shiro has just stepped into the interrogation room with him.

But only for a second. Then Keith tenses all over.

Shiro has a legal pad and a folder under one arm, and a badge hangs from a lanyard around his neck. He’s dressed how he always dresses, jeans and a t-shirt that’s a size too small.

“Hi,” he says, taking a seat directly across from Keith.

“Haggar’s going to kill you.”

Shiro blinks. “As far as the Galra know, all four of us were taken into custody around the same time, as part of an operation around one of the jobs we did together. So, providing you didn’t tell anyone who I am besides Lance and Pidge, my cover with the Galra is in tact.”

He might be looking for confirmation from Keith, but he doesn’t get it. All Keith provides is a chilly stare.

Shiro lays his pad and folder out on the table and pulls out a pen. “I’m going to ask you some questions about your involvement with the Galra. I’ll take down your answers, and we’ll use that to put together an initial statement for you. Okay?”

“Did you tell them?”

Shiro’s pen pauses above the paper. It takes him a while to say, “Tell them what?” And his voice cracks on _what_.

The smile that Keith wore into this conversation is gone. Now his jaw has gone tight, clenched to the point of pain. A voice in the back of his head is screaming— _say it! Say it loud, make sure everyone knows!_ Only when he opens his mouth no words come out. His throat burns. Fuck, wasn’t this the whole point of coming here? To rat Shiro out, to cost him everything? And now—faced the pitiful expression on Shiro’s busted-up face—he can’t do it. _Fuck_.

Shiro sets down the pen and folds his arms on the table between them, leaning forward. “Keith.” Keith hears Shiro’s voice from two nights ago in his head, sounding not so different, pleading, _Keith, please._ “I’m sorry. I want you to understand how sorry I am.”

“Not sorry enough.”

“That’s your decision. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

“Good, because I don’t.”

Shiro nods. If he’s affected by Keith’s insistence, he doesn’t show it. “You did the right thing, coming here. We can protect you.”

“From Haggar, sure.” Keith’s gaze floats to the ceiling. “Who’s gonna protect me from you?”

When Keith lowers his eyes, Shiro has his head bowed. He draws a deep breath and his shoulders tremble. Keith wishes he felt more victorious, having produced this result from Shiro, but instead he’s filled with a sort of echo, a hollow sensation. It’s not satisfying. If anything, he feels sicker than he felt before.

The door to the interrogation room opens and Allura strides in, her mouth a thin line. “Agent Shirogane, I’m relieving you.”

Shiro gets to his feet, keeping his head ducked so that Keith can’t quite make out his expression. He mutters something to Allura on his way out; Keith catches the words _told you_ , and the wet cadence in Shiro’s voice. The interrogation room’s door closes with an unsettling _thud_.

Allura settles in across from Keith, smiling her very pretty, unassuming smile. Keith guesses there’s a lot going on behind Allura’s smile, and if he were in a different state of mind, that might worry him.

“I apologize for my partner’s unprofessional conduct,” she says, brow furrowed.

“You have no fucking clue.”

The smile slides off Allura’s face. “Then give me a clue, Keith. Tell me whatever you’d like.”

The burning returns to Keith’s throat. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you’d like to tell me! We can discuss the Galra family. We can discuss Haggar and her associates. We can also discuss Agent Shirogane, if you’d prefer.”

Keith sits there with his mouth hanging half-open, trying to wrap his head around what she’s just offered. “Did I make him cry?”

The expression on Allura’s face doesn’t change, but Keith can see the blood drain from her cheeks. “I… I think it is possible that you did, yes.”

“Good,” says Keith, simply. He weighs his options, eyeing Allura. “You’re his partner, right?” She nods once. “What kind of person is he?”

Allura swallows and shifts in her seat. “I’ve always known him to be a good man, but undercover work can bring out unique behavior in people.”

“If you’re his partner, you have to trust him. How can you trust him?”

Keith can tell he’s making her uncomfortable, and he assumes that wasn’t part of the plan. “I believe we know Agent Shirogane in very different contexts. Your distrust of him is understandable.”

Keith leans back in his chair. “I do know him in some contexts, yeah.”

Allura stares at him for a long time, then clears her throat. “I’m glad you came to us, Keith. I may not agree with Shiro about everything, but he was correct when he said you made the right decision. Thank you for putting your wellbeing and the wellbeing of your friends above your personal feelings about Shiro.”

“Anytime.”

Allura picks up the pen Shiro left on the table some minutes ago. “May I begin taking your statement?”

“Yeah,” says Keith, sitting forward suddenly. “You may. Let’s talk about Haggar.”

**Author's Note:**

> i post update progress on twitter (@bigspoonnoya), but i don't do set times and i do have a full-time job, so.
> 
> thanks for reading!


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